Chocolate Chilli Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Icing

Chocolate and chilli is a combination that people either love, or are really skeptical about. I am a lover of this combo, but am so often disappointed that you can't taste any chilli or get any heat. So when I decided to try this combination for myself, I made sure the flavours and heat were there!

I used the chocolate red wine cake recipe, which is an absolute winner, I use that ALL the time now, it's my go to recipe. It's so versatile - if you don't want the red wine in there, use full cream milk instead. You can add all kinds of flavourings to make this batter into whatever kind of cake you like. It works as a cake, or as cupcakes. This time I used mini cupcake tray, which gives me 24 cupcakes (the mix actually yields more than that, I also filled a 12 hole cupcake tray as well!). This is a great recipe for parties because you get so many cupcakes out of it!

Make sure you try the batter before you cook it - if you can get a hint of chilli, then it's perfect. When the cupcakes bake, the cayenne pepper becomes more pronounced - you can taste it, and it's hotter! Don't worry - the icing balances it out perfectly!

Ingredients
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cup red wine
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 generous cup plain flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Method

1) Preheat the oven to 160°C, and non stick your tray/prepare patty pans.

2) In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until it forms ribbons. Add the egg and yolk and beat well, then the red wine and vanilla. At this point, the cake will look a little split, but it's all good, it'll come together!

3) Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and cayenne together, and add to the wet ingredients. Mix gently until combined, then use a teaspoon to fill the cupcake holes about 2/3 to the top.

4) Place the trays in the middle of the oven for 15 minutes (depends on the size of your trays though!) or until a skewer comes out clean. Allow to cool before icing.

Now, the cream cheese icing... This isn't a recipe. It's just a guideline. I often find cream cheese icing gets really runny. I decided not to follow a recipe and just wing it. It worked.

I used a whole packet of cream cheese, and used my KitchenAid to beat it with about a 2/3 cup of icing sugar until it was sweet enough for me, double cream to take the savoury tang off the cheese, and some full cream milk just to loosen it up a bit (because the double cream was REALLY thick!). I added a heaped tsp of cinnamon as well. Just add these ingredients until you get to a consistency you can work with, whether you're piping or just using a palette knife. Use your instinct. 

I experimented with how I wanted the piping to look, though I'm really not much of a piper. I found out that I pipe slightly to the left! I actually quite like the look of having the stars and swirls mixed up on the stand.

These little cupcakes are perfect for high tea as well, which is handy as that is this months Sweet Adventures Blog Hop theme! Have a look at Delicieux, the host blog for this month!

Death by Chocolate - Clandestine Cake Club

WOW, our little cake club has grown! It started out as just 5 people who like to bake, and now look at it! We've been featured in a bunch of magazines, newspapers and websites, and our numbers are growing! We have some exciting new developments coming up as well, so keep your eyes peeled for announcements!

These were the kind of memories this theme evoked! Dress up party! I was a rockstar! But I look like a drag queen...

Our last meeting had a theme that everyone got excited about! Retro and childhood cakes had a lot of people reaching for the old Womans Weekly Birthday cookbook, myself included! We had some gorgeous cakes that so many people pointed at and shouted out "Hey I had that cake!!", it was so nice to bring back so many memories! I had quite a few cakes from that cook, the most memorable being for my 2nd birthday (though not sure HOW I remembered it, must be one of my earliest memories!) I had the train cake, with the coloured popcorn cargo! I loved it! My Mum went to so much effort for that cake... I was proud as punch, until Andrew Monk came and ripped the smoke stack off it and shoved it in his mouth! I cried, he got in trouble, and cried... I don't remember much past that though! Great party!

I decided not to do a cake from that book though, and do chocolate. That seems to be my forte - cakes never mess up when they're chocolate in my house! I remember my friend Jemma having sleepovers when we were a bit older, and she always had a death by chocolate cake from the local bakery. We thought it was just the height of over the top amazing cakes, and it was hands down the most delicious option for a cake, ever. Everyone kept peeking under the cardboard lid at it, wondering when we could have at it. This was the cake I would recreate!

I went with my old favourite, the chocolate red wine cake. I made 2, and sandwiched them together with Rachel Khoo's chocolate mousse. I then covered it in ganache, piped mousse, cream, and cocoa nibs. Death by chocolate indeed.

The recipe for the chocolate red wine cake can be found here.

The recipe for the chocolate mousse can be found here.

Here is what I ended up with! A little wonky with the piping, but a decent result!

We were really lucky to have the venue offered to us by Gregory Bruyer, who also happens to be a photographer! He took some gorgeous pics of all our cakes, including the one above.

Have a look at what our awesome bakers came up with!
*NOTE* The following photos are mine, not Gregory's - his are much better!

Fondant au Mocha

The Clandestine Cake Club of Perth recently had its 2nd meeting, about 6 weeks after we recovered from the first one! We started our cake club with the theme of autumnal fruits, but this time we went as far away as possible from anything remotely healthy. This time, the theme was decadence! What a rich, over the top afternoon! There was some bubbles to start out with, and as an antidote for sugar overdoses, we had some salted nuts and chips stashed away, just in case!

But the stars of the show were obviously the cakes. We had some awesome creations, but the best thing about it was everyones' interpretation of the theme! It was a really impressive display of baking, exactly what the theme demanded! It turns out that our interpretation of decadence has something to do with chocolate and booze!

We had a delicious bourbon chocolate cake, with bourbon cream cheese icing and a bourbon cider jelly on top from Ai-Ling, the brains behind Food Endeavours of the Blue Apocalypse! This was so impressive and such an original idea... The cake was Nigellas' Chocolate Guinness cake, but used bourbon instead! This cake is a go to fave of mine, so I was pretty much sold as soon as I tried it. I was really surprised how well the cider and bourbon went together! Such a great cake! We couldn't help but wobble it every now and again!

Bri of the fabulous blog Eat Meets West made a ridiculously impressive crepe cake, with something like SIXTEEN crepes! WOMAN! You crazy! But it was SO NICE. I thought it would be a bit sickly, as crepes have never agreed with me, but the swiss meringue buttercream between each layer did something to my cakey soul. It was so nice. We needed some teamwork to get the first slice out, but after that it was pretty special. Did I mention the chocolate icing that had been poured all over it? Bitch please.

To follow that was Liv's creation from Col Panna - Caprioska cake! She explained that to her, decadence meant cocktails, so she designed a cake to fit her favourite cocktail! There was lime, vodka in the cake, icing AND a glaze, as well as a coating of sugar with the vodka syrup, to replicate the crunch of the sugar in the cocktail. It was another really creative cake, as well as obviously being delicious! It was a nice change from all the chocolate too!

Then there was fellow organiser Carolanne, of Carolannes Kitchen, who, inspired by a recent trip to see Heston Blumenthal live, replicated one of his recipes - the exploding gateaux! Pop rocks in the base, and she used a water gun to squirt the top of the cake with chocolate! Very cool!

Then finally, my cake, which was a pimped up version of Trish Deseines Fondant au Chocolat. This, along with the choc guinness cake by Nigella is one of my go to choc cakes (along with the choc red wine cake I made last meeting!), because it is so simple, has few ingredients and is totally decadent! It is very rich, which is why its perfect for a Parisienne lady, as she only wants a tiny slice! I changed the recipe, but only slightly. I used almond meal rather than flour to make it gluten free, and to make it a bit more decadent I used espresso in the glaze rather than water. I made a coffee almond praline, blitzed it up and crumbled it on top for some crunch against the fudgy cake!


Here it is below...

Fondant au Mocha


Cake
200g Dark chocolate (minimum 65%)
200g butter (softened)
200g Sugar
1 tbsp hot espresso coffee
5 eggs
2 heaped tbsp almond meal


Glaze
100g Chocolate (minimum 65%)
50g butter
2 tbsp espresso coffee


Praline
1 Cup sugar
1/2 chopped almonds
Rest of the espresso (1-2 tbsp)


Method

1) Preheat the oven to 180C, and prepare a 25cm round cake tin.

2) Break the chocolate into small pieces and place in a mixing bowl, set over barely simmering water and pour on the hot coffee.

3) Let it sit until the chocolate is mostly melted, then add the butter. Again, leave it until it has melted then give it a quick, gentle stir to incorporate everything together.

4) Add the sugar and stir well, then break the eggs into the mixture one at a time mixing well after each egg has been added. Finally mix in the almond meal.

5) Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 20-25 minutes, you'll find the cake very moist in the middle - it shouldn't wobble still, but if it does, a couple more minutes and it'll be done! Just keep an eye on it. Note this is not a cake that rises much, and any rise that DOES occur, it falls back pretty flat once its out - don't worry, that's normal!

6) Leave the cake to cool completely in the tin/mould, and if you can, leave it overnight before serving.

7) While its cooling (or while its cooking!) put the sugar and coffee into a pan on a medium heat, and watch it bubble up and thicken into a caramel - DO NOT STIR!

8) Once its thickened, add the almonds and swirl the pan to combine. Pour it out onto grease proof paper and let set.

9) Crack the disc of caramel up, and put it into your blitzing device and blitz away! You decide how fine/chunky you'd like it, but don't go too far with it or it'll feel like you're eating sand!

This is also my entry to the We Should Cocoa challenge! This month the challenge is to pair chocolate with coffee, which is a pretty easy task as I LOVE it together! We Should Cocoa was started by Chocolate Log Blog and Chocolate Teapot but this month is hosted by The Kitchen Maid! 

Pimped chocolate red wine cake

If there are 2 things in life that are meant to be together, it's chocolate and red wine. How many bad days are sorted out by a combination of these 2 magical things? Cake can sometimes fix a crap day too. If you know a monumentally shit day is coming up, then you'd better stock up on red wine and chocolate. and cake. 

Or better yet...

Make chocolate red wine cake!!

It is REALLY good. Moist, not too sweet and rich enough to feel good, but not too rich to make you feel sick. It's fab with ganache. Its just fab. 

This was my contribution to the first meeting of the Clandestine Cake Club. I had read about this cake club on facebook and other blogs, and thought well, why can't we be the first CCC in Australia? So I put it to my dear friend Carolanne, and we held our first meeting in April. Basically, people come bearing cake, and it very specifically states it must be CAKE - not cupcakes or brownies or tray bakes or pies. Cake. The Clandestine Cake Club started small - but its quality not quantity, and that, we had in spades! All the cakes were fabulous, Liv from Col Panna made a BRILLIANT apple pie cheese cake (which S devoured when he got home!), which was layered with caramel, pecans, cheesecake, and stewed apples. It was a OMG moment. Bri from Eat Meets West made a caramalised pear and apple semolina cake, which I had never had before. I loved the texture of the semolina, and found that it was even better the next day! Carolanne from Carolannes Kitchen made a bit of a layer cake extravaganza! Olive oil sponge with orange blossom water, coconut sugar, persimmon cream and delicious ganache. WOOAAH!

The other cakey contributions!

Each meeting has a theme and ours was autumnal fruits, as we wanted to be seasonal and take advantage of all the wonderful fruit we have at the markets at the moment. I chose to adorn my cake with pear and glaze it with the Maggies Place fig jam I got from my Urban Locavore box, being that pears and figs are at their peak right now!

This recipe will make one roughly inch high cake. Considering this was the Clandestine Cake Club, I upped the cake a notch and made the recipe twice, and sandwiched the 2 cakes together with dark chocolate ganache. It was a delicious tweak! I used the ganache recipe from Maggie Beers Harvest book, that goes along with the chocolate fig cake.

This recipe was adapted from the one I found at Smitten Kitchen. There are a few recipes floating around on the net, all pretty similar, so far, all great!

Ingredients
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cup red wine
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 generous cup plain flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Method 
1) Preheat the oven to 160°C, and non stick your tin (I just gave my silicon mould a spray with canola oil). 

2) In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until it forms ribbons. Add the egg and yolk and beat well, then the red wine and vanilla. At this point, the cake will look a little split, but its all good, it'll come together!

3) Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and cinnamon together, and add to the wet ingredients. Mix gently until combined, then spread batter into the greased tin/mould. 

4) Slice up a pear into half cm slices, and arrange them gently on top of the batter in any pattern you like.

5) Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a skewer  comes out clean. Cool in pan for about 10 minutes, then flip out of pan and cool the rest of the way on a cooling rack. If you're using a silicon mould, wait until its completely cooled before turning the cake out.

6) Warm up a couple of tablespoons of fig jam in a small saucepan, and brush it over the cooled cake.

If you wish to add ganache just make sure the cake is fully cooled! The cake does not rise a huge amount, so I would make 2 cakes if you're looking to layer them - however would love to know how you go if you just cut one in half!

Low Fat Chocolate and Raspberry Muffins

I have a cold. I need nourishment! I've had an up and down day, I've felt pretty crappy, and have stayed in my PJs - its 4:30pm. I need chocolate, antioxidants, something baked. I have some great chocolate, and cocoa nibs, and I'm going to use them!

I went on a trip down to Margaret River recently and paid Gabriels Chocolates a visit. They were the very first single origin bean to bar chocolate maker in WA, and a visit to their factory in Yallingup is worth it!

When you walk in the first thing you notice is the smell - it's awesome! You can try their chocolates, read the tasting notes on the back of the packet, see the cocoa beans and nibble on the crushed cocoa nibs. 

The woman working there has told us cocoa nibs has 300 times the amount of antioxidants than blueberries! That is crazy good for you! I grabbed a bag straight away! A quick google confirms the cocoa nibs status as a superfood - its all over the place. They taste very slightly chocolately, nutty with a hint of bitterness. 

I also grabbed a 3 pack of their dark chocolates, all 72% - their highest was 85%! I can imagine that being amazing in a sauce over game meats or a steak in winter!

Steve and I had cracked open the blue one to eat a few bits, and so today while my body was having a battle with the flu, I decided that there was nothing else for it than something baked with chocolate. Something easy, something that required only what I had in the cupboard. Muffins.

I looked for a bunch of recipes, and eventually David from Food Blarg sent me a really basic Stephanie Alexander recipe which I pimped out with inspiration from Kirbie's Cravings and her post on the best chocolate muffins! They turned out really well, considering I forgot to put the oil in. That's what made them fat free! They're pretty grown up muffins, they're not that sweet because of the dark chocolate, paired with the cocoa nibs - and I only added about 1/4 cup of sugar. So they're actually pretty good for you! If you used spelt flour or something similar it would be even better!

I decided to use the Rio Caribe, from Venezuela - 72% chocolate, with flavours of coffee, almonds, red fruits and pure cocoa.

The hot chocolate mix I used was a spanish one I got from Kakulas Sisters in Fremantle. Its in a beautiful tin and tastes amazing! Its got  a bit of sugar and vanilla in it too.

Ingredients

Makes 6 large, or 12 mini muffins

1 cup of SR flour
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup milk
1 egg

1/2 tsp salt

40g of high quality chocolate (I used 72%), chopped

2 heaped tsp of good quality hot chocolate mix 

5 or 6 frozen raspberries

oats for garnish

cocoa nibs for garnish


NOTE: I would also add vanilla (I didn't have any), and for a yummy twist, omit the raspberry and add some instant coffee and cinnamon - finish it off with a coffee glaze for a spiced mocha muffin!

Method

1) Preheat oven to about 180C, grease your muffin tin. 

2) Mix all dry ingredients into your mixer.

3) In a seperate bowl mix all the wet ingredients together, then add to the dry ingredients and mix until combined.

4) Add the chopped chocolate, and crumble in the frozen raspberries.

5) Pour the (very runny!) mix into the muffin tins, pretty close to the top, and sprinkle the top with a tsp of cocoa nibs and oats.

6) Bake the muffins for about 30-40mins, or until a skewer comes out clean.

7) Leave them to cool in the tin until they're manageable and then allow to cool on a tray.

Eat with guilt free pleasure!

Chocolate orange xmas cake truffles

Here in Australia, we have a hot xmas - its often 30C plus, everyone is outside playing cricket or volleyball, having a swim, or sat inside drinking in the air conditioning. We have a really different xmas from our friends in the northern hemisphere, but we still have similar food to the English when we celebrate the 25th December. We often have turkey, everyone has a ham... dessert is often a christmas pud, with custard, cream or ice cream, most of the time we have the choice of all 3! But it is pretty heavy, its really not a summer dessert. So Ive decided to take this popular flavour, that so many associate with christmas, and change it up a little bit that we still have xmas cake, but you just take a mouthful rather than a bowlful!

I took a regular 700g supermarket xmas cake, added melted chocolate, cointreau orange zest and then let it sit for an hour while I cooked dinner. I rolled them into balls, topped them with white chocolate and some chopped glace cherries. Put them in the fridge and let them set.

How cute are they!? Once they set they're great to give as gifts, or to put out when you have friends over during the xmas season. They last for aaages too, freeze em, seal em up in the fridge for times when you need to bust out the treats! This is a great recipe to get kids involved with, as they love the chocolate drizzling, cherry decorating and of course, a spoonful of melted chocolate for them!

Recipe

1 x 700g christmas cake

1 x block of dark chocolate (as dark and good a quality as you can find/afford)

Cointreau to taste (or use a bit of orange juice if you want to omit the booze)

Zest of an orange 

Half a block of white chocolate

Glace cherries

Method

1) Melt the dark chocolate - I use a bain marie type setup, of simmering water with a metal/glass bowl on top. You can melt it in the microwave as well - whatever works for you!

2) Crumble up the christmas cake - and have a taste! These cakes often taste different, so make sure you have a bit of a test so you can judge how much of everything to add later! 

3) Add the cointreau, I think I added 3 or 4 good sploshes, the orange zest and the chocolate then give it a good old mix! Make sure its all incorporated, and leave it for a while for the flavours to meld and make friends!

4) Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper, and start to roll out little teaspoon sized balls of the mixture, until youve run out. Pop the balls in the fridge, while you melt the white chocolate, and finely chop the cherries. How finely you chop them is up to you and your level of attention to detail! The cherries are meant to be like holly, so how you decide to chop them is up to you! Putting the balls in the fridge means that when you drizzle the white choc on, it sets a little bit and so doesnt run off the balls as quickly (taking the cherries with it!). If youre somewhere cold, I wouldnt worry about it, but in my warm summer kitchen it helped!

Drizzle the truffles with white chocolate and decorate with glace cherries! Pop them back in the fridge to set and then pop them in containers to store! Or just eat them!

This is also my entry to We Should Cocoa, whereby each month an ingredient is chosen by either Choclette or Chele from Chocolate Teapot, for the bloggers participating to pair with chocolate. The december challenge is orange! I cant just make ONE chocolate orange recipe... Its my bfs fave sweet combo, and Ive already made chocolate orange ice cream which was AMAZING!! Ive also made Nigellas chocolate orange loaf, which was really nice... Can you tell choc orange is a favourite in our house!?

Azure, Mt Hawthorn

Couldnt be arsed rummaging around for something for lunch, so S and I decided to check out Mt Hawthorn, since we live 5mins away... We decided on Azure, because S decided he wanted one of their baguettes after checking out the menu that sits outside. The decor is mostly blues and browns and it looks nice. We were sat near the window and were poured some water straight away.

I ordered a steak sandwich, and S got the beef burger - both are the same aside from the meat. I didnt even have a look at the drinks list as I wasnt feeling up to it, after a few wine filled evenings - so cant comment on the quality of the wine list! Noticed that the salt and pepper were in little wooden bowl type things with a spoon which looked cool. However ours didnt have one, and so I wasnt really keen on using any since my first reaction was to use my fingers to get it out, and Im sure others had done the same... Didnt end up needing it anyway!

We get our meals after a longer than normal wait, considering most people in the restaurant were eating already when we came in... I had asked the waitress about their bread and if they make it in house (as they make alot of other things themselves) but no, its from Bakers Delight, and even though it says on the menu the steak sandwich and burger are on foccacia, my waitress informs me that its ciabatta. Im not sure how well she knew the differences between the two? Anyway, it all came out looking good, with a small serve of chips but a mighty sandwich!

The basil mayo was nice and the steak wasnt so tough or badly cut that you had to knaw at it like you do with other steakies Ive had in other places. The bread was crusty and soaked up the juices, and everything inside bread did what it was supposed to. It was a good steakie and I enjoyed it - it wasnt anything to really rave about, but it was as you hope your sanger will be. Id order it again for sure.

The chips were the same story. We know what decent chips are like - these were decent. They didnt blow my mind, they werent worth mentioning during the meal for being great or crappy. They were just how a normal chip is expected to be. I ate them all!

We were a bit full but I had seen their desserts, and you can order the 5 senses of Azure, which is 4 different desserts, either chocolate, strawberry or vanilla. We decided to have a go at the chocolate one, for $17.50 which was specified to only be for one person. S had to go and find someone to take our order, even though someone had come and given us the menus, left, come back and filled our glasses (with the menus now closed and us waiting patiently for our order to be taken) and left again... I had already been waiting about 10mins for them to come and take the order, which wasnt great as I didnt want to be sat there all afternoon waiting.

The dessert looked ridiculously good, and it was certainly NOT a serve for one person. We were instructed to start with the one in the coffee cup, as it ws hot from the oven and would keep cooking so eat it now! It was a chocolate pudding that was just cooked on the top and sides but deliciously molten in the middle. It was RICH and we were both feeling like really, we could have handled just having this.. but we have 3 more!

The 2nd one was a chocolate creme brulee. There was the expected satisfying crack when you tapped the caramel, which gave way to light, creamy chocolate custard. It was very very good. The slightly burnt caramel, with its extra crunch worked brilliantly with the rich creamy chocolate. It was so smooth and light, S really enjoyed this one!

Next up was a chocolate mousse which had some sort of crumb underneath it. It had quite a pile of shaved fennel on top which was an interesting touch! This was so light, rich, and decadent. We were nearing our chocolate threshold but were doing out best! There wasnt enough crumbs at all, it would have been great to have a real crunch to go with the mousse - but it was still really really good! I felt like you had to have quite alot of the fennel with the chocolate to taste it, as the mousse was pretty rich. I dont really like fennel much so gave it a miss, aside from when I tried a bit of it and couldnt taste it, which I was actually pretty pleased about!

Last, but not least, a white chocolate and mint choc chip ice cream on a tuile of unknown flavour. This was a good way to end, because the mint was refreshing when compared to the rich, decadent nature of the previous 3 parts of the dish. It turned out to be quite sweet, but it was a nice change, both in texture and flavour to the rest.

This dessert was pretty special... certainly not for just one person to eat - we struggled with the 2 of us! But absolutely worth trying!

We both enjoyed our meals here, everything was really nice but the dessert was a standout! The service was friendly but slow... all together our meal came to just above $50 which was pricey for lunch however we did splash out on dessert.

Id come back here again for sure, its a bit pricey but what we got, we very much enjoyed.