Chocolate Covered Cream Cupcakes

Chocolate Covered Cream Cupcakes

Having made custard just shortly before, I remembered how I’ve always wanted to make a creamy filled cupcake thing, like the Boston cream pies you can buy. The coconut milk in these gives them an especially soft, delicious taste and these went so quickly when I made them I’d be tempted to put it into more cupcakes from now on…

Ingredients:

- Chocolate

Dough:

- 2 cups self raising flour

- 1 cup sugar

- ½ cup coconut milk & ½ cup dairy free milk

- ½ cup oil

- 1-2 tsp vanilla

Custard filling:

- 1 cup dairy free milk

- ¼ - ⅓ cup sugar (to taste)

- 1-2 tsp vanilla

- 3 tsp cornstarch

1. Mix the wet ingredients. Add the sugar. Then add the flour and pour into cupcake moulds. Bake at 180  ̊for about 15-20mins or until lightly browned. Let the cupcakes cool.

2. Make the custard filling: mix the cornstarch into a small bit of the dairy free milk until no lumps. Add to the rest of the ingredients in a small pot. Cook on a medium-high heat until mixture becomes more viscous and to the consistency of custard.

3. Using cake decorating piping or other suitable equipment, poke a small hole in the cupcakes at the top in the middle and fill each cupcake with the custard mixture. Moving the funnel/piping around up/down/left/right inside will help fill them more.

4. Melt some chocolate and cover the top of each cupcake.

There’s been a lot of dessert entries recently over the last two months in this blog. A lot of this is due to me taking a break this (short) summer I had and therefore deciding on what to make/bake, while Conor was doing physics research. Being the one of the two who prefers baking to cooking the amount of desserts stuff well increased here!

Strawberry sherry trifle

Strawberry sherry trifle

We were working at this amazing festival recently called The Secret Garden Festival, run by Milk & Cookies. It was wonderful – storytelling around campfires, brilliant music bands and comedy, fairy lights, a see saw, hula hoops and of course we made far too many vegan cookies for it too! During it one girl we were working with told us all about her granny’s great sherry trifle. I had never tasted trifle before, but once she described it I wanted to give it a go.

Ingredients:

- Dairy free cream to be whipped (optional)

Jelly:

- 1 can strawberries (or equivalent fresh + water)

- 2 tbsp sugar

- 1 pack Veg Gel (Can be found in tesco) or equivalent (eg agar)

- 2 tbsp sherry or other liqueur

Sponge: Your basic sponge cake:

- 1½ cups self raising flour

- 1 cup sugar

- ¾ cup soya milk/water

- ½ cup oil

- 1 tsp vanilla essence

- 1 tbsp vinegar

Custard:

- ¾ cup dairy free milk (eg soya)

- ¼ cup sugar (or to taste)

- 1 tbsp cornflour

- 1-2 tsp vanilla essence

1. Make basic cake recipe: mix the wet ingredients, mix the dry ingredients. Mix two sets together. (or mix the wet, add the two dry ingredients in together then). Put in oven at 180 ⁰ for ~20mins or until golden brown.

2. Make the jelly; Blend the strawberries from the can, with the juice in it, until smooth (or equivalent if using fresh strawberries). Take off froth if any. Add sugar and put into saucepan on a low heat to dissolve sugar. Make up you Veg Gel or agar as on the packet (add to appropriate amount water said and heat). Add to mixture. Add sherry.

3. Cut the sponge cake into fingers or squares and place on the bottom of a bowel or other dish being used. Pour the jelly mix over the sponge cake bits and leave to set.

4. Make up the custard; Dissolve cornflour in about 1/3 cup milk until no lumps. Add this to the rest of the milk in a saucepan. Add sugar and vanilla essence and heat until consistency is creamy and more condensed. Leave to cool and pour over the jelly/sponge part once this has set.

5. Whip up cream if using and put on top. The trifle is now ready to serve!

Conor was really hesitant to have some as his past experiences with trifles weren’t so good he says. In the end though it was him that ate most of it!