Oh no, not another Valentine’s blog post! Well, rest assured, this one has nothing to do with schmoozy love stuff. For me this post is dedicated to my amazing family and friends, who are making my world.

So let me thank you all for being so great. Especially mum, who’s at the moment the biggest and best supporter of a huge project I’m working on.
Christine, for being such an awesome sister and always listening.
Dad for helping me work out some of the complicated tasks ahead.
Emma for inspiring me over the years and never failing to amaze.
Verena for always being there.
Carole for being such a cool fellow foodie.
Elmira for being so enthusiastic about everything I do.
Ayshea for her hard work and amazing creativeness.
Jael for sharing cakes and stories.
Lawrence for being a token Brit and always helping out.

And everyone else too!!! Thank you for following this blog and loving great food! You’re all awesome!

Red Velvet Cupcakes

From The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook

Makes 12 small cupcakes

60g butter
150g sugar
1 egg
10g cocoa powder
20ml red food colouring
1 tsp vanilla extract
120ml buttermilk
150g flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 + 1/2 tsp white wine vinegar

For the frosting:
150g icing sugar
25g butter
60g cream cheese
heart-shaped sugar sprinkles

Preheat the oven to 170° celsius.

In a bowl, beat the butter and sugar with an electric hand mixer. Once the mix is light and fluffy, add the egg and beat until it’s nicely incorporated.

In a small bowl, mix the cocoa powder, the food colouring and vanilla extract until it becomes a thick paste. Add to the butter mixture and mix until evenly combined. Keep whisking and add the buttermilk, flour, salt, bicarb of soda and vinegar until all is well combined.

Put paper cases into a 12-hole muffin tin. Distribute the dough between the cases, and bake for 25 minutes. The cupcakes are done when a skewer inserted into the middle of a cupcake comes out clean. Put on a wire rack and leave to cool.

Meanwhile, prepare the frosting. Cut the butter into little cubes, and then using an electric whisk, cream the butter and cream cheese together. Add the icing sugar in 3 parts, but hand beat the mixture at first (otherwise you end up covered in icing sugar dust). Once that is all in and mixed, carry on using the electric whist until any lumps have gone from the icing. Put in the fridge to set for 30 minutes.

Fill the icing sugar into a piping bag and pipe onto the cupcakes. Sprinkle with heart-shaped sugar sprinkles.

My life is quite a rollercoaster at the moment, but a fun one! September has always been an exciting month: it’s my birthday, the end of summer (I love autumn) and the start of a new school year. But after having spent my whole life in education, it came as quite a shock that this circle of annual renewal was suddenly over.

Don’t you find it hard to break with that new beginning routine once you have a job? September becomes just another month, without the novelty of new stuff to learn, new teachers and new people. Well, I’ve decided to take action! I’ve signed up for classes again! I found a little place that teaches interesting cookery classes and I got all excited when I found out they were offering cake decorating classes and Japanese cookery lessons. Hell, sign me up!

Those who know me are aware of the fact that I have an obsession with all things Japanese, and those who read my blog – well – you probably have gathered by now that cakes are my best friends. So, these classes are damn well perfect for me!

Now, whilst I know that my cakes always look pretty yummy, I am well aware of the fact that they’re pretty plain. I don’t do intricate marzipan flowers, crazy icings or colourful rainbow creations.

I actually don’t want to change that. I’m a purist when it comes to cakes – no sparkling glitter, crazy sugar shapes or marzipan kitsch will ever make it onto my cakes (unless it’s a client order. Client? No clients  yet – so no need to worry about that).

So why take that cake decorating course? Because I want to learn the skills. I’m fascinated by discovering professional culinary techniques, finding out how things work and unveiling the mysteries that surround food. Call me nuts, but I’d much rather spend a day watching over the shoulder of a chef than attending a music festival.

Anyway, enough ramblings, here’s this week’s recipe. A childhood favourite of mine: a “Marmerkuch” (in Luxembourgish) or “Marble Cake”. It gets its funky pattern by layering a chocolate and a vanilla dough, then giving it a minor stir and you get the mable effect. I’ve added chocolate chips and almond shavings to the separate doughs, so that there’s a bit of a texture play at work. I hope you like them. They sure look very pretty.

Happy September and may you all enjoy your new start of the new ‘school’ year! ★

Marble Vanilla Chocolate Cupcakes

Makes 9

180g flour
3 eggs
170g sugar
150g butter
50g shaved almonds (or chopped if you can’t find any thin ones)
1 + 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
75g dark chocolate
50ml semi-skimmed milk
2 tsp cocoa powder
1 + 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 pinch salt

Frosting:

150g milk or dark chocolate couverture (if you can’t find that normal chocolate will do)
round chocolate sprinkles (optional)

Preheat the oven to 180°.

Melt the butter and let it cool down. Meanwhile roughly chop the dark chocolate.

In a bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar until it becomes frothy. Add the melted butter and keep beating. Gradually add the flour, salt and baking powder.

Now split the dough into two parts. Add the vanilla essence and shaved almonds to one part. For the chocolate dough, mix the cocoa powder with the milk until dissolved. Then add to the dough and incorporate well. Add the chocolate chunks.

Line your muffin tin with cupcake cases or grease them so the dough doesn’t stick. Put two tablespoons of the chocolate dough into each mould, then add two tablespoons of vanilla dough and finish off with more chocolate and vanilla. Once all the dough is used up, take a small spoon and ‘cut’ through each cupcake, or make a cross if you prefer it more mixed. This will create the marble pattern.

Bake the cakes for 35 minutes. They will rise quite a bit so stick a wooden skewer into one cupcake to check they’re fully baked (this will be the case if the skewer comes out clean, without dough sticking on it).

Take the cupcakes out of their moulds, and let them cool down.

Meanwhile, melt the chocolate couverture in a bain marie – this is a hot water bath. Basically, you take one big saucepan and fill it with very hot (but not boiling) water. Then you take a smaller saucepan into which you put your chocolate. Dip this saucepan into the water saucepan (without water spilling into the chocolate pan) and gently melt the chocolate. This prevents the chocolate from burning or caramelizing.

Once melted, drizzle the chocolate over the cool marble cakes and decorate with chocolate sprinkles.

Oh lord, can I please tell you all how amazingly motivated I am after this weekend?! I am literally bursting with ideas – ideas for recipes, posts, projects, videos, businesses, you name it, I am motivated to do it! Seriously, I feel like I just came back from an intense Tony Robbins workshop, but instead I just spent the most amazing weekend at Food Bloggers Connect. A whole 3 days of meeting fellow food bloggers, laughing and crying with them (no, actually, no crying, just lots of laughing), listening to informative talks about how to improve your food photography, write recipes, build up traffic and  most importantly, have fun whilst doing it.

Yeah yeah, you hear the word conference and think ‘booooring’. In fact, some of my friends were referring to my food blogging weekend as “the geek conference”. Hello?! Yes, geeky maybe a tiny bit, but geeky with tons of food and wine. Still sounds like a boring conference? No? Though so!

Finally meeting Mowie and Sari

The stunning venue

Lemon Tart

Meeta taking photos

The weekend kicked off with a wine tasting – and a test! We had to guess what countries certain wines came from, what grapes they were made of and what vintage they were. Hmmm, glad it was multiple choice, so I could just close my eyes and circle one option (and like this I got 4 out of 6 right!). Yes, I’m not a wine conoisseur at all! I love drinking it (loads), but have no idea about anything more than if I like it or not. I’d love to pair up with a wine buff to take Anne’s Kitchen to the next level and suggest wines to go with my meals. Anyone out there? Preferably male, good-looking and single! Ha, just kidding!

The tasting was followed by a great Skype conference with Jaden of Steamy Kitchen, whose enthusiasm was just amazing and rubbed off on everyone! Afterwards we all gathered outside again for more wine and some food. It was the most beautiful, warm summer evening – a real precious rarity in London. So, thanks weather gods for squeezing in some sun and warm temperatures (on Monday after the conference it started raining again!).

The fabulous Kerrin from My Kugelhopf

The coolest thing about FBC was hanging out with all those fabulous people!

I had a blast talking to Kerrin of My Kugelhopf (honestly, who doesn’t have a great time with that girl?! She’s the most entertaining person in the world, hell, make it the universe). I was quite surprised to hear that she nearly moved to Luxembourg instead of Zurich, and I seriously wonder how My Kugelhof would have turned out if set there. Maybe it would have been called “My Luxemburger”?

I had a fabulous time talking to the ever so lovely Mowie of Mowielicious. His amazing photos still blow me away, even though he let me in to some production secrets… I think I’ll have to go over to his place one day and watch the master at work – and eat his cakes!

Found out that Sarah of Maison Cupcake had been at the same casting for the TV baking show (and didn’t make it either – we’re both happy to have missed out on that stress!). Then chatted to Rachel of Cookyourlife and found out that she is actually going to be a contestant on a British TV cooking show, so fingers double crossed for you girl!

Bumped into Bron of Feast with Bron, and recognized her from the Food and Drinks Journalism course we took 3 years ago! Good to see we’re still both passionate about it!

A big thumbs up to Sari of Cooking your Dream, who let four international bloggers crash at her place! Great to meet the lovely Tiina of Sparkling Ink and the real Cooking Ninja! Shared many laughs with the delightful mother-daughter bloggers of Peanut Butter and Jealous, and met the lovely Reena of Coconut Raita. And I finally got to touch an iPad thanks to Nando of Cuca Brazuca.

I was also very happy to get some great chocolate and beautiful spoons from Julia of Always Leave Room For Dessert. She brought them all the way from Canada! Can’t wait to use them as props in my next shoot!

And last but not least, a massive thank you to Beth of Dirty Kitchen Secrets for all her hard work in organizing this event!

Anyway, so much to share and tell, so many amazingly lovely people I met. I can’t name them all, but have a look at my blogroll on the right hand side and see how many new links are there? They’re all fabulous, so please click on some and explore their blogs!

Tiina from Sparkling Ink

Pamela, The Cooking Ninja!

With the delightful mother and daughter team of Peanut Butter and Jealous!

Chilling between talks

Julia from Always Leave Room For Dessert

So, since I haven’t been able to bake all weekend, or last week, I decided to go back to my recipe archive (yes, I have a whole library of recipes stacked in some folder on my computer), and pull out this lovely passion fruit cupcake recipe. Passion fruit for passionate people. Makes sense, right?!

What struck me about this cupcake recipe is that it is in fact quite unusual for a cupcake. It’s not your usual sponge base topped with loads and loads of butter cream. The secret to this cupcake is its lightness and its freshness that comes from the use of cream cheese. It’s quite a fluffy cake, more on the soufflé side than on the sponge cake one.

Don’t be surprised that the cupcakes collapse when you take them out of the oven. Really, no need to shed a tear for that imploded middle bit! Because that’s where your superhero, the frosting, comes into play! We’ll be able to hide that hole with a good slap of frosting, just like the best concealer can cover up those dark rings under your eyes on a hangover day.

Trust me, magic’s in the make-up and in the frosting! ★

Passion Fruit Cupcakes

Makes about 12

For the cupcakes:

185g unsalted butter, softened
170g sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 eggs
125g cream cheese
2 passion fruits (get 5 in total, since you need 3 more for the frosting)
125g self-raising flour (if you can’t get that then use normal flour with 1 tbsp baking powder)
30g plain flour
60ml milk

For the frosting:

250g icing sugar
100g cream cheese
50g unsalted butter
3 passion fruits

Preheat the oven to 180°.

In a big mixing bowl, beat the butter, sugar and vanilla until light and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time and beat well after each addition. Add the cream cheese and the passion fruit pulp (including the pips) and beat until smooth.

Now add the flours alternatively with the milk to the passion fruit mix. When it’s all smooth and mixed, distribute the dough in the 12 cupcake holes (which you have lined with cupcake cases).

Bake for 20 mins or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the centre. Let the cupcakes cool down for a bit until transferring onto a wire rack to cool.

Meanwhile make the icing: Mix the butter and cream cheese in a bowl. Gradually incorporate the icing sugar (in small batches! You don’t want your kitchen full of exploding icing sugar dust!). This will take about 5 mins. Once it’s smooth, beat in the pulp (including pips) of 1 and 1/2 passion fruits. Beat for 2 minutes until it’s all nice and smooth. Put in the fridge until the cupcakes have cooled down completely.

Once the cupcakes are cold, take the icing out of the frige and let it warm up for 5 minutes (so it’s easier to spread). Either spread the icing on with a spoon or, like I did, use a piping bag with a star-shaped nozzle to make a nice shaped icing. Top all the cakes with a bit of the remaining passion fruit pulp.

I would recommend eating these on the day they’re made, or the next day, but don’t keep them for longer since they will only disappoint.

Voila, the perfect cupcake for passionate people!

This is no April’s fools post!

I’ve got some news for you all! I finally, for the first time in my life, have entered a baking competition! I’ve been talking about it for like ages, but never really got the courage to actually do it. Then, the other day, R. emailed me this advert for a casting for a TV baking competition. They’re basically looking for Britain’s next best amateur baker. R.’s email just said “Anne, you HAVE to enter!’ So I thought, why not?!

The funny thing is that I am not really a competitive girl! Really! I don’t like people backstabbing each other on the way to the top. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to be the best though. I am a perfectionist. An ambitious perfectionist.

Anyway, so I sent in my application (answering endless questions on my passion for baking and my various skills). And 20 minutes later, I got a phone call from the production company asking me to come to a casting the next day! Hell, that was quick! Obviously, I would have jumped on the opportunity immediately, had it not been for a little problem: I was meant to fly out that day! Dilemma! After some back and forthing they managed to give me the very first casting slot of the day, so that I could rush off immediately afterwards and make my way to Heathrow just in time for my flight to the South of France (boy, I felt like a proper jet-setter that day).

So, on the day of the casting I had to bring two baking samples along: one cake and one pastry or bread. After quite a bit of thought, I decided to bring the amazing Pear Frangipane Tartelettes (that many of you have praised on this blog) and make a traditional British cake: a Victoria Sponge Cake (with a little twist: I added coconut to the dough and filled it with coconut cream). My cakes got brought in front of the judges, who rated it in terms of looks. Then I had to go into the room, and they tasted the cakes and criticized them in front of me – and all on camera! Nerves!

But, all good news: they really liked the cakes! First, they tried the Tarts. They cut one open and analyzed the different layers. Only criticism: too much pastry, not enough frangipane. That had never occured to me, so I was glad to receive some constructive criticism. They liked the tastes though and said it was a really well-crafted tart. Over to the Coconut Victoria Sponge: they said it cut well and that it tasted amazing. They loved the coconut twist and said it was really original. Thumbs up!

After the tasting I got to do a screen test, basically a whole interview with a producer in front of a camera! Man, I was so nervous! I don’t remember much of it, except for thinking at some point ‘oh gawd, what the heck am I saying?!’. So, fingers crossed I didn’t come across totally bad and actually managed to convince the production team to let me get into the next pre-lemination round: a whole day in a cookery school where they give us baking challenges to select the final 10 to appear in the actual show.

Wish me luck….

Anyway, over to this post’s recipe!

Easter is just around the corner and I thought it’s time to make something that gets me in Easter-egg mood. Initially, I was contemplating making some hot cross buns, which are traditionally eaten in the UK around Easter. But these days you get them in the supermarket all year round, so it’s not something special anymore.

So I was flicking through my Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook the other night (yes, I read cookery books before going to sleep, and wake up every morning to a floor full of post-it covered cooking magazines and books). And I realized that, even though I have had the book for a fair amount of time, I had actually never made anything from it! The book definitely deserved to be ‘inaugurated’! (what worse plight for a cookbook than a dusty life on a shelf full of other cookbooks that are being used..?!). But what to choose from all those amazing recipes? I simply decided to go with the obvious: make the first one in the book! A vanilla cupcake!

It is quite unusual for me to make cupcakes. You see, here in London we’re spoilt for cupcakes. They’re everywhere! And they come in all colours, shapes and sizes. But, even though these days cupcakes have something a bit too common about them, I can’t help but somehow like them. They’re perfect in size. They look cute and you can transform any cake into a miniature cupcake version. Perfecto!

As for vanilla, don’t get me started! I love it! I think you can divide people into different flavour categories! Lots I know are chocolate people. They’re the ones heading straight for the chocolate pudding on the menu. I on the other hand am a vanilla girl. I like its nice subtlety, and I think it’s easier to create a good chocolate cake than a good vanilla cake. Somehow, you need to be more careful about how to balance the flavours.

Anyway, I think I’ve been rambling enough for today. Happy Easter everyone! Hope you have some fun easter egg hunts and lots of nice cakes!

Vanilla Easter Cupcakes

Makes about 11

140g caster sugar
40g unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
120ml whole milk
120g flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt

Frosting:
160g icing sugar
50g butter, at room temperature
15ml whole milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
11 mini chocolate eggs (I used Cadbury Mini Eggs)
a few sprinkles

Preheat the oven to 170°

Put the sugar, butter and vanilla extract into a bowl and beat until fluffy. Add the egg and beat again until fluffy, then add the milk.

In another bowl, mix the flour, salt and baking powder, and gradually add the mix to the egg butter mix while beating until the mixture is smooth. Don’t overmix.

Spoon the mixture into paper cases in a muffin tray until two-thirds full. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Leave cupcakes to cool.

Make the frosting: Beat the icing sugar and butter together at slow speed, add the milk and vanilla extract until it is light and fluffy (about 5 min). Spread over the cooled cupcakes and decorate with eggs and sprinkles.