Cupcake Fondue | WEEKEND WIND UP #53

Two days ago was the beginning of carnival season in Germany.

Over the next few days and months the number of parties and get-togethers will increase so I thought it would be the perfect time to share an idea for the perfect party dessert.

{pic via pintsizesocial//Amanda Krueger from Bake It Pretty}

Have you ever heard about the cupcake fondue?

Super-easy yet super-delicious and a dessert that easily can be turned into a fun activity for all of your guests!

Make a batch (or two or three, like I did) of plain miniature cupcakes (without frosting or icing or any kind of topping).

Then arrange marshmallows, colourful sprinkles, chocolate sprinkles and whatever else you can imagine to put on top of your cupcakes in small bowls on the table.

Melt some chocolate, add some cream, stir well and fill the mix in little bowls which you place on top of tea warmers.

Give a little fork to each person participating in the cupcke fondue and tell them to dip their cupcakes and decorate them with whatever they please.

FUN!

By the way, I made my cupcakes with 125 g butter, 125 g sugar, 2 teaspoons vanilla sugar, 2 eggs, 250 g plain flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder and 125 g milk, but you could also use this recipe which is fairly similar.

How Sweet It Is, another one of my favourite food blogs, has another great recipe you could use.

For decoration you could also use shredded coconut, peanuts, walnut halves, m&m’s/smarties, various sprinkles, chocolate chips, mini cookies… everything that’s small and sweet, really.

Amanda Krueger from Bake It Pretty shares some instructions on how to make a chocolate cupcake fondue here.

My new love(r)… is rich, dark and seductive

I have a new love(r).

He is smooth and sweet and looks good enough to eat…

Jealous? Don’t worry, you can get one, too.

His name is Chocolate Fudge Pie.

I tried this new recipe yesterday and it sounded so delicious that I couldn’t take my hands off it.

Now, here is how I did it:

I made a dough out of 200g flour, 20g brown sugar, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 125g butter and 2 tablespoons cold water and put it in the fridge for an hour. (In the meantime I read other blogs and wrote some job applications.)

Then I preheated the oven to 180°C, greased my pie tin and rolled 2/3 of the dough so that it would make the cake base. I used a fork to make little holes in the base, then put it for 10 minutes in the oven.

In the meantime, I melted 150g dark chocolate (60% cocoa) with 100g butter and let it cool down a little.

In a seperate bowl, I mixed 4 eggs with 200g brown sugar, one package of vanillar sugar (you can use a little bit of vanilla essence instead), 7 tablespoons milk and 1 tablespoon white rum (the recipe says dark rum but I couldn’t find dark rum so I used white rum instead). Then I added the chocolate-butter to this mix.

I then used the remaining dough for the surroundings and then put my chocolate mix on top.

Now I put that in the oven for another 35 minutes, took it out, let it cool down and then carefully took it out of the pie tin.

In the end, I whipped 200g cream to which I added 40g of brown sugar and topped the pie with it.

And… voilà – this is what the finished slice of temptation looked like: Yum.

[I used the Chocolate Fudge Pie recipe from this book and modified it a little bit – I used a bit more sugar for the whipped cream (mainly because I miscalculated a little bit, but it turned out really nice, so I think 40g sugar is okay) and I used white rum instead of dark rum.]

Skulls & Bones & Candy | WEEKEND WIND UP #5

One of my favourite German blogs, brezel.me, pointed out earlier this week that amazon is now selling groceries, food and beverages.

That is just crazy.

I decided to investigate on the matter and so while surfing on amazon and looking at all the ridiculous things they sell there, I found the most A-M-A-Z-I-N-G cookie cutter:

Isn’t it cool? I think it’s hilarious. Just imagine great-grand-auntie {insert name of nosy relative} invites herself to come to your place for a cup of tea and you dish up these biscuits…

I do realise that most pastry shops will not like the thought of skull-and-bones-shaped confectionery, nevertheless have I been playing with the idea of training as a confectioner with this bickie cutter being the first tool of the trade I’d buy.

Now, here is some other cool stuff I found (click pictures for source):

NESTABLE: Matryoshkas as measuring cups!

CUTE: A "Tweety"-cake tin.

YIN & YANG: Gives your desserts some good feng shui!

ROMANTIC: Heart-shaped love puzzle.

STAND BY YOUR MAN: With some tool-shaped handyman-bickies.

The following are three other things that would come in quite handy, I think (or are just cool in general): This amazing cake tin that makes your cake turn out 3D-pumpkin-shaped. How cool is that?

Then there are those silicon muffin tins (I think they might be worth a try, because you can use them again and again and don’t have to throw them out like the paper cases).

And finally that cake tin on the right. I love how it looks like a soon-to-be-in-full-bloom rose. So beautiful. I bet it makes some yummy cake!

I would love to start baking right away, but before I go, here is one random picture I found.

When I first looked at it, I thought it was an emu or a moa even, but then it occurred to me it might be a dinosaur:

FROM OUTER SPACE: Moa-Dinosaur-Goose.

Well, according to amazon, this is actually meant to be a goose. I reckon it looks like a Moa-Dinosaur-Goose-Alien from outer space, but yeah… it might just be a normal goose with weird feet, who knows.

♨ Enjoy your weekend and lovely baking, everyone! ♨

Do you like baking? What are your favourite baking tins? What is your favourite recipe?