Chocolate Heart Whoopie Pies

For those of you who aren't into the baking trends, whoopie pies may be new to you. So what is a whoopie pie? It's basically two cookie-like cakes sandwiched together with a delicious creamy filling. They are a combined version of cookie and cake and are taking over the baking world by storm, becoming increasingly popular among bakers. Traditionally, whoopie pies are made with a marshmallow filling but I decided to give it a modern twist and use classic buttercream instead. No one likes bland food, especially when it comes to sweet treats. And what's my version of whoopie pies without a little surprise inside?

Thanks to Not Quite Nigella's recipe, I was able to reproduce some delicious chocolate whoopie pies. It was the first time I've ever made these treats, and I'm glad that I did! They however, came out a bit too large for me so I decided to cut out heart shapes with my cookie cutter and split each in half, which explains why there are so many crumbs. You can cut out other shapes or have these in their regular circle shape and fill them with your favourite frosting or filling. You could even try strawberry and cream whoopie pies like the traditional scones!

I wanted to surprise my tasters with a strawberry-flavoured marshmallow hidden inside, surrounded by the creamy buttercream. It was a delicious treat with a nice chocolatey moist crumb which was complimented by the filling and heart-shaped marshmallow. The dark chocolate chips added in the batter were a nice addition and took the whoopie pies to another level. Next time I might try adding in white or milk chocolate chips, or even sprinkles for a funfetti version.

They may not be too pretty or fancy, but they are certainly tasty and worth to try. There are so many flavours and versions of whoopie pies from pumpkin to red velvet to choose from, that it may be time to try another one soon!

Chocolate Whoopie Pies adapted from Not Quite Nigella.
Makes about 12 whoopie pies

Ingredients:

125 grams unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 large egg

1 cup of milk

1 cup of brown sugar

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon of salt

2 cups of plain/all-purpose flour

1 and 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda

1/2 cup of cocoa powder

1/3 cup of chocolate chips

Classic Vanilla Buttercream from Savory Sweet Life.

Ingredients:

226 grams (2 sticks, 1 cup) unsalted butter, softened

3 to 4 cups of confectioners' (icing, powdered) sugar, sifted

1/4 teaspoon of salt

1 tablespoon of vanilla extract

2 to 4 tablespoons of milk/cream

To make the whoopie pies,

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C (350 F). Using an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat well until creamy.

2. In a bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, cocoa powder and salt and set aside.

3. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, alternating in three parts with the milk and mixing well after each addition. Stir in chocolate chips and mix to combine.

4. Use a greased whoopie pie pan and fill the moulds with batter, OR use a 1/4 cup ice cream scoop and drop 12 balls of batter, about 6 inches apart, onto a baking paper lined baking tray. You can also pipe them with a piping bag if you're a neat baker.

5. Bake in the preheated oven for 12 minutes until a skewer inserted in the middle is clean or they spring back when lightly pressed. Remove from oven and cool completely on a wire rack before filling or decorating.

To make vanilla buttercream,

1. Beat butter with an electric mixer on medium speed for a few minutes until pale and creamy. Turn the mixer to a low speed and add 3 cups of the icing sugar and mix until incorporated.

2. With the mixer at a medium speed, add the vanilla extract, salt and 2 tablespoons of milk/cream and beat for 3 minutes. Add another cup of icing sugar for a more stiff consistency or add the rest of the milk/cream a tablespoon at a time.

Assemble the whoopie pies by piping or spreading some buttercream on one cake and sandwiching it with another. Decorate as you like with icing, sprinkles or sifted cocoa/icing sugar on top!

Marshmallow Chocolate Cupcakes

Pair soft and not-too-sweet marshmallow with a beautifully light and chocolatey cupcake and you have a wonderful yet playful treat! Actually, it is marshmallow fondant that tops these super cute cupcakes. After trying one and getting a lot of positive feedback from my friends, I declared them as one of the best creations I have ever made...not to mention amazingly delicious and simple to make. I made these to take with me to a park I was going with my friends and I desired to make something colourful and pretty like the homemade candy hearts and stars I made a while ago.

The inspiration of this idea came from flicking through the 'Cupcakes by Colour' book by the Australian Women's Weekly. This book is the first place where I look for decorating cupcake ideas. One particular cupcake that caught my eye looked similar to this but was just blue and white stars so I adapted this idea to make more colourful and attractive cupcakes with the addition of hearts. Then applying marshmallow fondant to the cupcake instead of traditional fondant as suggested just made sense and it fit into my plan perfectly.

It worked so well when matched with the perfect chocolate cupcake I found from Glorious Treats. I also had my eye on the marshmallow fondant Bakingdom used for her cakes until I finally got my hands on a packet of vanilla marshmallows. That's when I really started to get creative with the help of the marshmallow fondant recipe by Clockwork Lemon. I got my four gel colours out and added a little to each portion of fondant that I divided by weighing (I love my kitchen scales). Then I cut out hearts and stars (the same cutters I used for the candies) from each coloured dough, replacing the cut-out shapes into the cut out pieces of dough.

The instructions also stated that you should slather some buttercream icing or ganache on top of the cupcake to adhere the fondant but I didn't think that was necessary as the cupcakes were already sticky on the top which helped the fondant to stay in its place. These cupcakes were gone in a flash and everyone loved them. I am already being asked to make another batch of these cupcakes so I highly recommend that you to try out these treats soon!

Perfectly Chocolate Cupcakes recipe by Glorious Treats

Makes about 24-27 cupcakes

Ingredients:

2 cups of sugar
1 and 3/4 cups of plain or all-purpose flour
3/4 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder
1 and 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
1 and 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda
1 teaspoon of salt
2 eggs, at room temperature
1 cup of milk
1/2 cup of vegetable oil
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1 cup of boiling water

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C (350 degrees F) and line muffin trays with cupcake liners.

2. In a large bowl, sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder and baking soda. Add sugar and salt and stir until combined.

3. Stir in the eggs, milk, oil and vanilla and beat for one minute or until incorporated.

4. Add the boiling water to the mixture and mix together thoroughly until it is a shiny thin batter.

5. Fill the cupcake liners with the batter until 2/3 full.

6. Bake in preheated oven for about 22-24 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre is clean.

7. Remove the cupcakes from the tray and allow them to cool completely on a wired rack before topping them with marshmallow fondant.

Marshmallow fondant by Clockwork Lemon

Makes just enough to decorate about 20 cupcakes.

Ingredients:

250 g packet of vanilla marshmallows (or any other flavour of your choice)
Icing or confectioner's sugar (the amount can vary so make sure you have an entire bag on hand)
Food gel or colouring

Method:

1. Put the marshmallows in a large microwavable bowl and sprinkle teaspoons of water to make them a little moist.

2. Microwave the marshmallows for ten seconds at a time, stirring with a greased wooden spoon until it has melted and puffed up enough to be sticky (for me it was about a minute in the microwave).

3. Start adding the icing sugar to the marshmallow mixture and stir, adding more each time until it becomes a soft and fluffy dough. Grease your hands if it becomes too sticky and transfer the mixture to a icing-floured bench. Keep adding icing sugar while kneading until it is stiff enough to roll out but be careful not to add too much icing sugar. If it is too stiff and breaks easily, add butter or stick it in the microwave for about 2 seconds.

4. Portion the finished fondant dough by weighing the whole piece and dividing that by 4 (it depends how many colours you desire). Roll out the dough briefly and add a little food colouring in the middle. Start kneading and wear plastic gloves if you don't want your hands coloured until the colour is distributed evenly, making sure that the other pieces of dough are wrapped tightly with plastic wrap.

5. Roll out each piece of coloured fondant to about 5 mm thick or a little less. Cut out shapes with your tiny cutters (about 3 cm in diameter) slightly close together. Put these shapes in a zip lock bag while you do the rest. Alternate the shapes and place them in the cut out holes of all of the coloured portions of fondant. Roll it again to ensure the shapes are in place.

6. Cut out rounds of fondant from each colour with a 7 cm round cookie cutter (or a similar size that fits the cupcakes) and carefully place each piece on top of the cupcakes, pressing them slightly in place.

Chocolate Delight Cake

What happens when I put two of my favourite things together? You get a delicious combination of moist, rich chocolate cake with silky smooth and deliciously sweet buttercream frosting. It's such a simple cake, but is just enough to satisfy anyone's sweet tooth without creating a tooth ache. Plus, it's easy to make and is customisable too. Decorate it the way you like it if it is too plain to your liking.


I used David Lebovitz's Devil's Food Cake again, just like many other bakers who declared the cake as their favourite chocolate cake. I also tried experimenting with the recipe by increasing it 50% so I could create another layer of cake. It was still as delicious with a moist chocolatey crumb but maybe my measurements were a little wrong as one layer had a small part that was undercooked and dense. I think next time I should just stick with the original recipe. But if your adventurous like me, you could try it out and see if the results are as good as the original.

I was actually going to decorate the sides of the cake with chocolate trees made out of melted chocolate. But when I tried piping it, it turned out to be a disaster. The hot melted chocolate (I did not want to cool down otherwise it would have set) burnt my hand a bit and oozed from the piping bag everywhere onto the baking paper. So, after an unsuccessful attempt at making a baking paper piping bag, I gave up and decided to leave the cake nice and white on the outside. I didn't bother to pipe decorations either because I was too tired after the mishaps.


Devil's Food Cake from David Lebovitz

Makes a two (or three) layer 8 inch cake.

Ingredients:
9 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder
1 and 1/2 cup of cake flour (you can make this by replacing three tablespoons of plain flour with cornflour/starch)
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1/4 teaspoon of baking powder
115 grams (1 stick/4 ounces) of unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
1 and 1/2 cups of sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 cup of water or coffee
1/2 cup of milk

For the recipe and instructions of the Perfect buttercream frosting, click here.

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C (350 degrees F) and grease and line 8 inch cake pans (I used two pans).

2. In a medium bowl, sift together cocoa powder, flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder and set aside.

3. In a small bowl or measuring cup, mix together the water (or coffee) and the milk and set aside.

4. Using an electric mixer, beat together butter and sugar for about 5 minutes until smooth and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, making sure that it is mixed in properly.

5. Mix in half of the dry ingredients into the butter mixture, then add all of the wet ingredients (milk and water). Stir in the remaining dry ingredients and mix until fully incorporated.

4. Divide the batter into the prepared pans. You can do this by weighing (use a kitchen scale for this to weigh the whole mixture then divide it by two or three).

5. Bake the cake layers for about 25 minutes and check with a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake if it comes out clean. Cool in pan for 5 minutes then transfer to cool completely on a wired rack before frosting or decorating.

Homemade Candy Hearts and Stars

Sometimes I feel like baking cakes. Sometimes cupcakes, or cookies! But that Friday morning was different; I was too lazy to bake up a storm and I wanted to make something that was easy yet fun to do. So while being in my "lazy bake mode", I browsed through recipes on the web only to find something really cute but simple: Multilingual Conversation hearts by Susan from Diamonds for Dessert. I can admit that I fell in love with those little hearts as soon as I set my eyes on them. They looked really attractive and bright and colourful especially with all the languages stamped on them saying "I love you". It was such a smart idea and Susan is really talented in creating sweet things. You should go check out her amazing blog!

I blame myself for rushing in the cutting out process because they are not as perfect and neat as I expected. But at least they're cute and colourful, right?  I also decided to leave out the messages on them so they would be just homemade candy hearts and stars. No complicated languages or stamps or liquid food colouring. I didn't have enough time for those things anyway so I just kept them plain and simple. Making stars as well seemed to be a great idea since I had little star cookie cutters laying around, but feel free to use any small cookie cutter you have.

These little candies are actually quite easy to make using mainly powdered sugar or icing sugar and gelatin without the need of any fancy ingredients. It was almost like working with fondant though but it does become dry pretty quickly when exposed to the air. Rolling it out, it brang back memories of me playing with play dough as a kid; moulding it into different shapes and showing off my creations to my mum. It was nice to think about it and it made me even more excited because the best part is that these pretty treats are edible!

There is one important thing you need to have when making these, that is... patience, yes, lots of it because you need to let them dry out for a few hours before they are ready to eat. That is, unless you like eating raw candy, but trust me, they taste better when they're hard in texture. I did however, put them in the oven at the lowest temperature possible for a few minutes to make the drying process faster. But that also depends on how thick the candies are. Mine were a little more thin than those from Diamonds for Desserts so they dried quicker. That's up to you to decide on whether you like your candies thick or thin.

For this fun project, you can divide the dough equally by weighing them on a kitchen scale and add any food colouring you like as well as flavour extracts. I only had vanilla though so I used that for all of them. They definitely tasted candy-like and was sweet and delicious! Perfect for packaging them in pretty boxes to give to someone special as little edible gifts.

Slightly adapted from Multilingual Conversion Hearts by Diamonds for Dessert

Conversation Hearts adapted from about.com
Makes about 180 candies

1 tsp unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup water
1 tsp light corn syrup (I used honey instead)
1 lb (454 grams) powdered sugar, plus extra for dusting
1/4 to 1 tsp assorted flavoring extracts
assorted food colorings
heart-shaped or other small cookie cutters

Method:

1. Combine the gelatin, water, and corn syrup or honey in a small bowl and mix. Put it in a microwave oven for 15-20 seconds, or until the gelatin dissolves and mix again. Pour this mixture into a bowl of a stand mixer (Or if using a hand mixer, pour into a large bowl). Add 1 cup of the powdered sugar to the bowl and mix on low until the sugar is combined. You can also alternatively use a spatula or whisk in place of the mixer.

2. Add the remaining powdered sugar 1 cup at a time, mixing until all the sugar is combined and this is where you should end up with a stiff dough. Dust the bench surface with the extra powdered sugar and put the candy dough out onto the surface. Knead the dough on the surface until no longer sticky.

3. Divide the dough into six pieces. Add the color and flavoring extract of your choice to each piece, kneading it until the color is well mixed and the dough is no longer sticky. If it is still sticky, knead in more powdered sugar until smooth. When you aren't using a piece of dough, make sure you keep it covered in plastic wrap so it doesn't dry out.

4. Once done coloring and flavoring, roll the dough out to between 1/8 inch and 1/4 inch thick. Use your cookie cutter to cut out shapes, theb place them on a parchment paper lined baking tray. Roll up the scraps and cut out more candies. Then repeat with the rest of the dough.

5. Let the candies dry for at least 24 hours. To test if its done, bite into a candy. If it's still wet in the center, let it dry longer. To dry them faster, preheat your oven to the lowest temperature possible. Once preheated, turn the oven off and place the sheets of candies in the oven with the door closed for about 10-15 minutes. Remove and let them totally cool.

Easy Peasy Ice Cream

This is the EASIEST ice cream recipe I've ever tried. Being a lover of ice cream, I was checking out recipes that I could use for my new ice cream maker when I came across Chocolatesuze's Super easy ice cream recipe. There are only 3 ingredients to the basic vanilla ice cream but you can add other ingredients to make your favourite ice cream flavour or anything else that tickles your fancy. The result is a super smooth and creamy texture that melts in your mouth. Its really amazing what cream can do. It is also completely egg yolk free (no more separating eggs or throwing egg whites!), with no cooking and can be made without an ice cream maker. It's that easy! So if you want to make your own ice cream but don't want to use the regular custard-based ice cream recipe or go to your favourite ice cream shop, this is the one to go!

Easy Peasy Ice Cream recipe:

Ingredients
600 ml thickened cream
300 ml can of condensed milk
1 tsp of vanilla extract
*Try adding flavourings like fruit puree, chocolate, green tea powder, nutella, maple syrup, cookies, lollies...the additions and options are absolutely endless!
*Use only half a can of condensed milk if you are adding anything that already has sugar in it like chocolate otherwise it will be too sweet. Because no one likes their ice cream super sweet.

Method
1. Whip the cream with an electric mixer (or a whisk but it's easier for a machine to do it for you!) until it reaches soft peaks and doubles in volume.
2. Add the condensed milk and vanilla extract.

3. Combine the ingredients together along with your desired flavourings.
4. Pour into a freezer friendly container or split it into different containers if you want to make other flavours.
5. Freeze for a few hours and beat the mixture again to airate the ice cream but if you are too lazy to do that, you can omit this step.
6. Freeze overnight and serve it as scoops or slices with your favourite toppings, enjoy!


Note that if you have an ice cream maker like me, churn the ice cream according to manufacturer's instructions and omit steps 4 to 5.