Canuck Cupcakes
Makes 2 dozen
Cupcake Ingredients:
2/3 cup butter
2/3 cup cocoa
2/3 cup boiling water
1/3 cup milk
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 tbsp. vanilla
Marshmallow Fondant Ingredients:
1kg bag of icing sugar (you won't use it all)
1 400g bag of mini marshmallows (you also won't use it all)
a bit of water
some butter/margarine/cooking spray
optional: food colouring and flavourings
So, step one, preheat your oven to 350°F, and put your cupcake liners into the pan. Then, put the kettle on to boil. While that's going, sift your flour, salt, and baking soda together into a small bowl.
Afterwards, sift your cocoa powder into a (separate) small bowl. Add the boiling water, and whisk until it's smooth. Then add the milk, and mix well. It looks and smells delicious, I know, but please don't eat it. It's pretty bitter. (Unless that's your thing; I thought I could handle it, and thought wrong.)
In your mixer, cream the butter on medium speed, until it's light and fluffy. Add the sugar, and mix for another 5 minutes, scraping the sides of the bowl as needed. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well between each. Lastly, add the vanilla extract, mix well, and you should have something that looks like this:
On low speed, add the flour mixture in three batches, alternating with the chocolate mixture. (I do flour-chocolate-flour-chocolate-flour, but sometimes I do 3 and 3, and it works just as well.)
Divide into your cupcake liners, and bake for about 15-20 minutes, turning the pan(s) about halfway through. They're done when you put a toothpick (fork) in and it comes out clean. Cool them in the pan for a few minutes, then pop them out and onto a wire rack to cool completely.
While those are cooling, you might as well get started on the fondant. First, pour a bunch of marshmallows into a microwave-safe bowl. If you want to do lots of colours, you can either do smaller batches and tint them before you start kneading, or you can do one big batch and divide it later. I went for the big-batch method, since I was a bit worried I wouldn't have enough of the right colours if I did them separately, but I think next time I'll do smaller, pre-tinted batches.
Anyway, pop whatever amount of marshmallows you want (I did about 2/3 of a bag, I'd say even half a bag would do the trick) into your bowl, and add a bit of water. (If you're flavouring it, add that now instead of some of the water.) Give the marshmallows a stir with a wooden spoon, to get them all a little damp, then microwave in 10-15 second increments, until the marshmallows are melty and stir well. I found it helped a bit to grease the spoon, but towards the end it got sticky no matter what I did. (If you're making/tinting the batches separately, add the food colouring now; add a bit extra since the icing sugar will lighten it a bit.)
Once your marshmallows are all melted and smooth, mix in some icing sugar. Again, no exact measurements here, just add a bunch and stir, add a bunch and stir, until it looks a bit like fluffy dough. (It'll still be sticky though.)
Now's the fun part. Dust your countertop with icing sugar, and dump the marshmallow/icing sugar mess out onto it. (Carefully though, or the icing sugar will go everywhere...my kitchen looked like a snowman sneezed by the time I was done!) Scoop a bit more icing sugar on top of the lump of "dough," then grease your hands - I used margarine, but butter works too - and start kneading it. Yes, it's a bit gross, but it's really the only way to get it done! Keep kneading in icing sugar until the fondant is stiff enough to roll out and work with.
Once it's all done, you can store and save it for later - grease a piece of cling wrap, tightly wrap the ball of fondant, and store in a ziploc bag or tupperware container until you're ready to use it. It's pretty much sugar, so it'll keep for a few months, and if it's too stiff when you go to use it again, soften it up by kneading a bit of butter into it.
I, however, was needing to use mine right away. Divide your fondant up based on how many colours you need. I had to do white, blue, and green, so I started with white. Roll your ball of fondant out on an icing-sugared surface so that it's thick enough to work with, but thin enough that it won't triple the height of your cupcakes. (Very technical measurement, eh?) Then, use cookie cutters, pizza cutters, a sharp knife, whatever you'd like, to make your fondant shapes.
Next up, blue. Time for some food colouring fun. Not. It took me forever to get my blue even close to the right colour with liquid food colouring; it was such a hassle that I made the boy promise to make me spring for gel colouring next time I need it! Put some food colouring on the fondant, knead it in, repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat. In the end, I persevered, and got a reasonably-close colour of blue. Again, roll it out and use whatever tools you want to cut your fondant. I found an espresso cup that was the same size as the tops of cupcakes, and cut out my circles.
Last one - green. No photos really, because it's exactly the same deal as blue. Add the colour, knead it in, repeat as necessary, cut out. I used a pizza cutter to get strips of green, very exciting stuff. Hence, no photos.
And now it's time to assemble. I put the little blue circles onto each cupcake, and patted them down so the fit within the liners. Cute, right?
Then, I used a little bit of water to make the numbers sticky, and put them onto each cupcake. I put them a little bit down from the top, because I was planning on writing the names, but next time I'll place them higher so I've got more space for the stripe.
Next, the green stripes went on, followed by the white ones, all the while wetting them just a bit to make them stick. I'm sure if I was a more professional fondant-maker, it wouldn't have been quite so dry/stiff, and I wouldn't have needed to wet it, but I'm not, so I did. C'est la vie. And that's it! Cupcakes are done!
So cute! And super easy. Plus, the marshmallow fondant tastes pretty good. You really can use any type of cupcake you'd like, I just included the chocolate recipe because, well, it's my current favourite. And the fondant instructions can be applied to any design, you don't have to just make mini Canucks jerseys with it, so it's a pretty useful one to master.
Seriously, I can't get over how cute these things are. Why not whip some up for the big game on Monday?
Enjoy!
c.
No comments:
Post a Comment