Star Studded Chocolate Cupcakes (Eggless)

The only time that gets me rolling with ideas more elaborate is April. There is so much flutter and celebrations that all I want to do is feed people than sitting on a computer.

To start with, its my daughters birthday month and I try beat my best every year. Considering how she loves the sweet section of the party - it also becomes my area of concentration. To top that its also the month of our wedding anniversary.  ;)

This year I distributed cupcakes to her classmates instead of the usual candy bags. The kids were delighted. If 30 something bouncing kids around me to open the box faster was not enough, the shrilling yays was making the point very clear. It seemed the teacher was not very happy as I had her class turned into an amusement park within seconds.

The minute these kids sat down to taste their cupcakes, the hum and the quietness was enough proof that I had them all charmed.

These beauties were just perfection. Beautiful humped muffins with equally simple pink and purple stars.

The recipe was adapted from Dishes from my kitchen

Recipe follows:

3/4 Cup Cake Flour
3 Tbsp Cocoa Powder
1/2 Tsp Baking Soda
1/4 Tsp Salt

4 Tbsp Olive Oil
1/2 Cup Water

1 Tbsp Vinegar
1/2 Cup Granulated White Sugar
1/4 Tsp Instant Coffee Powder
1 Cup Whipped Cream

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350 Degree F (180 degree C) and ready Muffin pan.

In a large bowl, whisk the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt and sugar.

In a small bowl mix Olive oil with water, vinegar and coffee.

Mix wet ingredients into a large bowl of dry ingredients.

Do not over beat.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Makes about 6 muffins.

Bake for about 16 - 20 mins or until the toothpick comes out clean. 

Let the muffins cool at the room temperature before icing.

Prepare 2 icing bag with a large and a small star nozzle and decorate as per your idea.

Plum Swirl Cheesecake

Its a beautiful start of year 2015. The things are taking beautiful meaning and more importantly the move was not as bad as I was dreading it to be. This month flew by right in front of our eyes and we could do nothing. Almost nothing is what I meant.

The next month's anticipation has already started and soon the air will be filled with everything red and all the food blogs with strawberries. 

I have this perfect cheesecake for who do not like very sweet deserts. The plum preserve adds the right amount of sweetness and the tartness, ohh yumm! Annndddd its Red!

What all was I saying about filling skies with red and love? 

It's Plum swirl cheesecake!

Recipe follows:

For the Base:
12-14 Digestive Biscuits
4 Tbsp Melted Butter
2 Tbsp Granulated Sugar (Optional)

For the Cake:
1 Cup Cream cheese
3/4 Cup Heavy Cream
2 Tbsp Water {normal temp}
2 Tsp Gelatin
1/8 Cup Condensed Milk or Desired Sweetness

For the Topping:
Plum Preserve  {or any other as you desire}

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350 Degree F (170 degree C) and grease eight inch spring form pan.

Crush digestive biscuits to fine crumbs, add sugar (optional) and melted butter to it. Press down the crumbs to a greased spring form dish.

Bake for 8-10 minutes until light brown.

Soak Gelatin in water for 2 minutes and melt on double boiler.

On a medium speed, whip heavy cream until it reaches soft peaks stage. Add condensed milk or desired sweetness.

Add melted gelatin and mix cream cheese beating the mixture until smooth.

Pour this mixture to the biscuit base. Add plum preserve randomly and give it a swirl by moving a skewer around. Refrigerate until firm. (Minimum of 4 hours till overnight)

Move cake mixture to fridge from chiller for 30 min before serving.

#NovemberRoad - Zebra Bundt Cake

“Why fit in when you were born to stand out?” ― Dr. Seuss

When I started working on my November list I had a couple of bookmarks to choose from. So I went around asking family members about what would they like to add to it.

Bundt cake was not there in the bookmarks because of the simple fact that its been done at home earlier. Mostly marble swirls. I stumbled upon one of the pins on Pinterest while looking for a surprise inside cake and was absolutely mesmerized by the colorful pattern. We had to add this to the NovemberRoad.

I didn't think I could pull it off until I reached YouTube looking for fondant cake tutorial and realized that its not as difficult as I made it up in my head.

And the best part?
No two slices are same. Surprise!

Recipe follows:    

The recipe was sourced from Home Cooking Adventure

Along with Chocolate and Vanilla batter from the recipe, I made Yellow batter by adding 2 Tsp of Yellow color to 3/4 cup of vanilla batter in a small bowl. (You can add less color depending on the product you are using)

How to create the pattern, I followed the method as shown in this video

P.S. For NovemberRoad Project, all the recipes will be displayed as a link. I will not be writing about them until I make any changes to the same. Thanks.