Happy Clappy New Year

Hello and welcome home chums,
I know its been a while but I am so glad you ventured back to find me again.


You would think that my absence would indicate some intensely busy period in my life where I just have so much to do that I simply do not have the time to bake.


This is in fact false. 


Since we last spoke my days have been filled with watching entire seasons of an endless number of television shows, (2 Broke Girls, New Girl, Hung, C.S.I and Kim and Kourtney take New York, just to name a few) eating, sleeping and occasionally wondering out of my room to socialize. I have also been baking because, due to my mothers abhorrence for sugary snacks, there is little else to munch on in my house. Most of my baked good over the past month have just been convenience baking; quick, easy, tasty, but not particularly impressive. But when I was invited to my best friends birthday tea I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to pull something magnificent outta the bag. 


So I thought about it and planned a spectacular array of cakes and cookies and brownies. YUM.
Then came the day of the party, I had set my alarm and woke up lazily looking forward to the day of baking ahead. I looked at the clock: 1.59pm. The party started at 2. 
Uh Oh.
So I whipped up some plain old mini vanilla cupcakes, real quick like. I ran out of icing sugar so they were frosting free and only took about 20 mins to make. Not what one calls a knock out.
But to my surprise they were a total hit! They were light and fluffy and delicious and without the frosting you could eat 5 in a row without then being too rich.  The recipe can be found here, just put the batter into cupcake cases instead of a cake tin.

The cupcakes were forced to go to the party naked. How shameful. 

So I have a problem, because of my apparent laziness I have many seasonal themed baked goods that I have made and photographed but not written about but now the seasons and holidays have passed. So what is a gal to do?
Rewind time of course!
With the blustery winds and bare trees outside its actually quite easy to pretend that we are in the midst of October, during the Autumn season. 
Being Autumn, thanksgiving is just around the corner so this recipe is perfect for my american friends. 


This recipe is based on this one from one of my ultimate blog crushes, Rosie from Sweetapolita.


Sweet Potato Surprises


3 large sweet potatoes
315 ml vegetable oil
230g plain flour
4 eggs
400g sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 tsps vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1 bag large marshmallows
chocolate shavings for garnish


The original recipe called for a few extra ingredients but I'm not a massive fan of nutmeg and ginger and such like, so I left 'em out.


1. Pre-heat the oven to 170°C and line a cupcake tray with paper cupcake holders. Put the sweet potatoes in the oven on a high setting for  10 minutes, poke it a little with a knife and if its still hard (which its likely to be) pop it back in the microwave for a few more minutes until it is cooked. 

Pretty orange potato hiding in its winter jacket

 2. When they are cooked strip 'em outta their little jackets and mash em up. While I was waiting for them to cool I played around with them, making them into shapes and patterns, see:

Sweet potato pie

 3. Beat the eggs and sugar on a high setting until it has reached a paler colour. Then add the oil and vanilla.

Adding da oil like a boss 

 4. The slowly add the cooled sweet potato and watch the mixture turn from pale yellow to bright orange. Seriously cake should not naturally be this colour.

What an odd colour for cupcake mixture

 5. Add the flour and baking powder slowly so that the batter doesn't fly all over the walls, unless you're going for that look. For a little flavor flav, sprinkle in the cinnamon and salt.

Flowery flour

 6. Beat the mixture until it is evenly combined. 

Thick oozing mixture

 7. Spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases. Now this is where I made my fatal error. I played around with the marshmallows a little bit deciding where it works best in the cupcake:

On top of a little mixture and a little mixture spooned on top

Spoon all the mixture in and then push the marshmallow in

First put the marshmallow in and then spoon the mixture on top

Turns out I forgot a pretty basic rule in baking:
Do not put marshmallows in the oven. 
Just do not do it. They explode and the result is not pretty:

Mangled zombie cupcake

The sugary marshmallows just melted in the oven, leaving a big gaping hole in the cupcake with a syrupy mush at the bottom. Boo, sad cupcake.
Quick on my feet I had to think of a way to fix these babies. Luckily, I had another bag of marshmallows on hand.

Just plug the hole with another marshmallow, simples

I whipped up some cream cheese frosting, which covers a multitude of sins, and sprinkles on some chocolate shavings and Ta-da! 

And with a sprinkle of cinnamon and a little grated chocolate

In hindsight I obviously would have not put the marshmallows in the oven. I would have melted the marshmallows or used marshmallow fluff to use in the frosting instead of cream cheese frosting. 
I gotta say these were not my favorite, but they look all festive and yummy. Best of all they can be used for all kinds of celebrations Halloween, Autumnal and thanksgiving. 

And so concludes my autumn post, welcome back to January my dear friends.