Easter Nests

With Easter just round the corner, have you thought of what treats you’ll be making?

I wanted to make some easy no-bake chocolate treats for Dan’s colleagues since bending over to reach the oven has now become quite a challenge for me. So, Easter Nests is it for them!

Ingredients
150g Shreddies cereal (mashed)
200g chocolate, melted
1 pack of mini eggs (I used 48 mini eggs in total)

Method
1. Use your hands or a blender to mash the Shreddies in a large mixing bowl.
2. Melt the chocolate (you can use a microwave or a saucepan)
3. Pour the chocolate into the mashed Shreddies and use a spatula to mix well. Ensure that the Shreddies are well coated in chocolate.
4. Depending in the size of your cupcake moulds, use either a teaspoon or tablespoon to fill each mould with the chocolate coated Shreddies. I used a mini-cupcake mould.
5. Place two to three mini eggs into each cupcake holder. Make sure you push them downwards slightly into the Shreddies.
6. Refrigerate for 2 hours to allow them to set.

I hope you’ll have fun this Easter! We’re so looking forward to the long weekend!

Vanilla Fairy Cupcakes with a Surprise

Our kitchen is tiny and has limited storage space. With a baby on his way, I had to clear a couple of shelves to store some of his essentials. Therefore, I decided to bake Vanilla Fairy Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting.

I adapted the recipe by adding half a teaspoon of Nutella in each of the cupcakes. That’s the surprise by the way. Daniel doesn’t eat Nutella but when he bit into it he thought it was regular chocolate! The cupcakes were so easy to make as BBC Good Food intended to target kids with this recipe. They turned out light and fluffy, just the way a good fairy cupcake should be. No fuss whatsoever.

With some leftover chocolates in the cupboard, I made chocolate frosting using the recipe from Dad’s Chocolate Drop Cakes. The frosting complimented the Vanilla Fairy Cupcakes superbly! It’s bound to be a winner with chocolate lovers out there. Oh, a little frosting goes a long way so don’t go crazy with it!

Since they are fairy cupcakes, I made them pretty by adding colourful sprinkles. Awww… I love how each of them looked – so dainty and graceful!

The usual protocol when it comes to baking is that I’ll keep a couple of slices for ourselves and the rest will be shared with Daniel’s colleagues. I do hope the men in his team won’t find these little fairies too girlish for their liking!

Steamed Double Chocolate Cupcakes

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I didn't grow up with an oven. It just wasn't popular in Singapore among my parents' generation. They didn't grow up with one either. But that didn't stop us Chinese from having cakes. How did we make cakes then, you might ask. 

We use a steamer. A steamer is an essential kitchen tool in a Chinese family. We use it to steam vegetables, seafood, eggs, buns, dumplings and cakes. I prefer steaming food to frying simply because it usually doesn't involve using oil and it's healthier. 

Here's a photo to show you what a traditional, old-fashion Chinese steamer looks like. This is the upper layer. It's 28cm wide which is a good size since I can fit my largest bowl in it when I need to. 

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As I'm feeling a little guilty for the lack of exercise today, I'm going to share with you a non-traditional, but healthy double chocolate steamed cupcake recipe! The basic recipe is similar to making traditional chinese steamed cakes. Are you ready for it?

Ingredients

• 75g all-purpose flour
• 1tsp baking powder
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1 egg
• 3.5 tbsp milk
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 4 tbsp chocolate chips

Instructions (Makes 6 cupcakes)

1. Fill a steamer with water and bring it to boil.
2. Sift the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder in a large bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg, sugar, milk and vegetable oil together.
4. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and mix them together well.
5. Add the chocolate chips to the mixture and mix well.
6. Fill each cupcake holder half-way. (I used silicon cupcake holders. Do not use paper ones!)
7. Place the cupcake holders in the steamer. Cover it and steam for 10 minutes.
8. The cupcakes are cooked when a skewer comes out clean.
9. Serve when cupcakes are warm or at room temperature. 

Tips

I find steaming cakes a lot more hassle free and easier than baking. But a huge pull factor is that I don't have to use that much butter and sugar that a traditional chocolate cupcake would usually call for.

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As you can see, the cupcake is really moist, fluffy and light. The cupcakes weren't too sweet so if you have a sweet tooth, you might want to double the sugar needed. I personally like it as it is and would prefer to taste the actual chocolate chips instead. I am really interested to make variations of steamed cupcakes since this was such a success. What other flavours do you reckon you'll experiment with?

Little Coffee Cakes

Happy midweek everyone! Hope you have had a smooth first half of the week and are looking forward to a great weekend wherever you are.

To kick start my weekend (I do start early, don't I), I found a really good Little Coffee Cakes recipe. These mini cakes are really moist and rich in flavour. They are incredibly delicious and I can’t promise you that you’ll stop after one little cake!

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There is no bitterness to these little cakes and they are surprisingly light too. This is the first time I've succeeded in making proper icing however I still need to work on swirling it properly so it does not taste only yummilicious but also looks fabulous!

Copyright Yoyo's Kitchen Adventures

It does look devilish, doesn’t it? The recipe was superb. Even Daniel, who isn’t a fan of icing, finished two little coffee cakes at once! Here's the adapted recipe for these wonderful little cakes.

Ingredients

• 50g golden caster sugar
• 70g butter, softened
• 2 large eggs
• 70g self-raising flour
• 1 tbsp instant coffee mixed with half tbsp water

For the icing

• 100g butter, softened
• 80g icing sugar
• 1 tsp instant coffee mixed with half tbsp water
• 25g plain chocolate, melted

Instructions (Baking time 17 minutes) 

1. Heat oven to 170C. Line 18 holes in 2 bun tins with fairy cake cases. 
2. Beat the sugar with the butter until light and creamy. 
3. Beat in the eggs, one by one, adding 1 tbsp flour at the same time. Beat in the rest of the flour along with the coffee. 
4. Spoon into the cake cases and bake for 17 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.  

Instructions for Icing

1. Beat the butter until pale, then gradually beat in the icing sugar, followed by the espresso and the melted chocolate.
2. Decorate the little cakes with icing when they have cooled.

Tips

Unless we're really desperate to wake ourselves up, we don't drink espresso. That hardly happens so I don't have any at home. I didn't see the point of spending a few Euros on a bottle when the recipe calls for less than 2 tablespoons of espresso so I used oridinary coffee powder which works just fine. As with all the recipes you'll find here, I always put less sugar than what's stated in the original recipes. 

If you could resist digging into these little coffee cakes immediately, I recommend chilling them for a couple of hours before serving. The icing would have set a little more by then. Unlike some cakes which get dry after refrigerating them, these stay moist even after keeping them for two nights.