Creative Baking

On the run-up to Christmas I challenged myself to walk away from recipes and create two types of cupcake that I had never tried before: Irn-Bru cupcakes and Mince Pie cupcakes. My research indicated that many people had come up with their own ideas for mince pie muffins but no-one admitted having made Irn-Bru cupcakes. The mince pie cupcake recipes showed a variety of approaches to the creation, though most opted to just mix the mincemeat through the batter.

Not what I was aiming for but I opted to give it a try.

When making Mince Pie cupcakes I wanted to capture the elements that make mince pies such a festive treat (sound cheffy enough?) - a crumbly, buttery pastry element and a gooey, hot mincemeat centre. I experimented with the approaches taken in the online recipes - the mincemeat swirl, the frozen lumps of mince pie in the batter - before taking my own route of a generously batter-topped pie. This had enough batter on top to differentiate it from the standard sponge-topped mince pies and the pastry bottom kept the cupcake tidy enough to eat with ones fingers (the mincemeat sank to the bottom in many of the other versions). It also gave a satisfyingly deep fill.

If you want to do the same, use a standard butter-pastry recipe (I used amaretto rather than water with the flour and butter for a nutty sweetness) and make deep fill mince pies in a muffin tin. Once cooked, remove tops (and eat!) and fill the rest of the muffin cups with standard cupcake batter. Bake for the normal length of time required by the recipe you use (the pastry can take it - gets a bit messy if the pastry isn't baked first). Enjoy!

Irn-Bru cupcakes were a bit harder. I reduced a litre of Irn-Bru down to a couple tablespoons of syrup. I added some of this into a standard cupcake batter and used the rest to top the end product. In retrospect I should have just used the syrup to top the cupcakes as the cupcake itself ended up rather tough with only a hint of the Irn-Bru coming through. The chewy, intense topping worked though!

These worked out reasonably well, but cooking your own concoctions can be difficult if you don't fully understand the mechanisms at play during the baking process. I hate to waste food so I make myself eat any disasters I produce. Perhaps this is why I bake off-recipe so little. Be bold, be brave, try something new folks - it's not always a disaster!

Ice to Snow

I realise my blog has fallen by the wayside recently, like so many other blogs sitting abandoned in cyberspace, but it has been on my mind. Hopefully I'll make more time for posting in this new year (not so new anymore).

Over the festive break I tried (or re-tried is more accurate) the winter sports of skiing and ice-skating. No pictures this post (sorry) as my frequent falls made carrying a camera a risky proposal.

Skiing is something I've always wanted to learn how to do. I love sledging but skiing always looked like the same idea with more control and far greater style. Plus an adult on a sledge with no kids just seems a bit sad (though that's unlikely to stop me!). I've tried to ski on two occasions previous to this one - a half day at school spent on a military base dry ski slope with next to no instruction (this is a snow plow, we'll leave you to it), spent mostly on the ground. The other occasion was a recent office outing to Sno-Zone in Braehead Xscape, the indoor ski slope with artificial snow. The hour and a half group session was much better than my previous outing but I still made little progress, still finding the snowplow a tricky technique (which amused my skiing friends).

So when a proposal was made to head up to Glenshee for a day, I was a little unsure about ditching my plans to hit the sales. I did go, and thank goodness I did! After about an hour of tuition I was snowplowing competently and was on the button lift up the Claybokie slope. I whiled away the rest of the day with mostly overenthusiastic skiing - go fast, skid, lose ski, get ski back on, repeat - and enjoyed myself thoroughly. I perhaps should have focussed more on slow, controlled turns but the temptation to get some speed up was just too much for me! The day was tiring on the legs, but most excellent fun. I recommend that everyone gives it enough of a try to get going properly and not just give up after a few hapless attempts to get going on the kiddies slope.

Similar to my skiing experience, I had only been on ice skates twice before my recent foray on blades. Once as a timid primary school pupil being forced out on the ice as part of family entertainment, once as a moody teen accompanying a far superior skater of a friend. Both outing were too nervous to be a useful base, with any time spent off the wall either spent on the ice or with my skated wedged for stability. Invited along to the Murrayfield Ice Rink as part of a birthday celebration, I was keen to redeem myself. My confidence bolstered by the skiing, I hit the rink full of energy and enthusiasm (due in part, it must be said, to the three cups of coffee consumed waiting for a tardy friend). Though I failed to pick it up in minutes, I spent no time on the wall and, after a number of almost-falls, found my balance and started working on increasing forward motion. It's a great feeling to glide across the ice, but then the falls incurred by the learning process are somewhat less forgiving than falls when learning to ski. I still have bruises from my most spectacular falls that day. Still work to do on this one but my feelings are similar to those towards skiing - give it a try, get over the nerves. It'll be worth it.