Bee Sting Cupcakes

I came up with those cupcakes for my friends birthday. He loves bee sting cake. But I am a newly passionate cupcake baker so I decided to go on the web and search for a recipe. What I found was an inspiration but not a recipe. Jilly's cupcake bar serves a bee sting cupcake but they only provide information on the cake, filling and topping used. Soooo... I decided to create my own recipe. For cake I used an almond cake combined with a lemon honey curd filling and a lemon cream cheese topping. They turned out great! So I wanted to share the recipe with you.

Almond Cake

Serves for 12 cupcakes.

Ingredients:
4 oz flour
5 oz sugar
11/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 pinch of salt
1.5 oz soft or melted butter
120 ml milk
1 egg
a few drops almond flavor (aroma)

Directions:
1- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line cupcake pans with cupcake liners.
2- Mix flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the butter and whisk with an electronic mixer. The mix might be a little dry right now, but don't worry rescue is near.
3- In a small bowl mix milk, egg and almond flavor until you have a homogeneous mass. Slowly add this to your dry mix while whisking. Whisk for a few minutes but not too long or the cupcakes will not be fluffy.
4- Divide the batter evenly between the prepared cupcake liners, filling each about ¾ of the way full. Bake 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

5- Next step is to prepare your cupcakes for the filling. You don't need special equipment to do so.

Special tip:
Take a small paring knife to cut out a cone of the center of each cupcake. Once you added some filling, add the top of the cone like a lid, simply slicing of the lower part of the cone. The sliced parts just happen to be a good bite size, so just treat yourself.

Lemon Honey Curd Filling

Ingredients: 
3 eggs
1 tablespoon lemon zest, grated
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
1/4 to 1/3 cup honey (dependent on how sweet you like)
6 tablespoons butter

Directions:
1- In a medium stainless steel bowl, whisk together the eggs, the lemon zest and the honey until evenly colored.
2- Add the lemon juice and stir.
3- Put bowl over a pot with simmering water. Whisk and add portions of butter, slowly heating the curd. Whatever you do, keep stirring until the curd reaches 160°F (or 71°C) or takes the consistency of pudding.
4- Remove from heat.
5- Put plastic wrap neatly on the top of the curd (not the bowl) to prevent a skin.
6- Refrigerate for several hours to thicken.

Special tip:
You can keep the curd for about one week or little longer in the refrigerator. If you have leftovers you can use that with vanilla ice cream,which just tastes heavenly.

Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:
1 8 ounce package cream cheese
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 zest of one lemon, grated

Directions:
1- Process your cream cheese at room temperature. Put cream cheese in a bowl and take an electric mixer and beat cream cheese until softened.
2- Slowly add sugar, zest and fresh lemon juice and keep beating until creamy, approx 3 minutes.

Special tip:
Cover your grater with a strip of baking paper. Doing so you can easily avoid the annoying scraping of zest off your grater.

3- Put into refrigerator until you need it. Put the frosting in a pastry bag and pipe it on top of the filled cupcake.

Roasted Almond Topping 

Ingredients:

2.5 oz almonds

Directions: 

1- Roast almonds in a small pan until golden brown. Be careful not to burn. Let them cool off.

2- Spread almonds on top of the cream cheese frosting.

Voila!

On Trial: Cake Pops I

Everybody is into Cake Pops these days. And as my friend is a passionate baker I presented her with a Monster Pops baking dish for Christmas. Yesterday I invited her over to tackle the pops which we bother never did before.

Here is a picture of the Monster Pops thingy. 

We also wanted to try our luck with the 'real' pops shaped like a ball dipped in chocolate and maybe sprinkles for decoration.

But I guess the dough was too wet (maybe we added too much frosting?) as the pops, once on a stick, dipped in chocolate either fell off the sticks or broke. Disappointed I put my share in the fridge and labeled this baking experience as time consuming fail.

The outcome. Top a pop, bottom monster and pops.

Today as I opened the fridge I spied the baked goods and glaring at them shoved one in my mouth. Well, what shall I say, the taste is just fine. They may not be presentable but they are delicious!