Mojito mini cupcakes

Page 150 - Mojito mini cupcakes

These were tasty although I'm biased as I love mint and lime and cake so these are my ideal cakes! They were nice and moist, and I was pleased they didn't have any fruit in the bottom this time so you get a good bite of cake! I

 would have liked to have put a sprig of fresh mint on top to garnish, but next time...!

Pina colada mini cupcakes

Page 148 - Pina colada mini cupcakes

Again, these are a lot of effort for some tiny little cupcakes but the sponge was lovely and moist due to the coconut milk replacing the milk and the pineapple at the bottom gives a nice surprise. Again I didn't read the recipe before starting, and therefore didn't save some coconut milk for the icing. But the sprinkle of descicated coconut gave it a tropical flavour nevertheless.

Strawberry daiquiri mini cupcakes

Page 147 - Strawberry daiquiri mini cupcakes

Hmmm.. I'm torn on my thoughts on mini cupcakes. Initially I thought they were just one big faff for not a lot of cake. However, after seeing them laid out on the cake stand they looked lovely and therefore I do think they'd be fab for a special occasion.

These tasted nice although I didn't read the recipe in advance and therefore I should have saved a bit of the rum reduction for the icing. Also the strawberry in the bottom seemed to be all that was left after they were baked, there seemed to be no cake!

However - they had a lovely flavour and if I wasn't trying to finish the blog before the end of the year I'd try making them again!

Maple and pecan layer cake

Page 144 - Maple and pecan layer cake

Generally I try to stick to the Hummingbird recipes 100% regardless, but I decided to half the quantities in this recipe as I've previously found the layer cakes just too huge! This was a tasty one so I could have made more, but I have leftover maple syrup so could make it again in the future!

Very yummy, a nice moist but dense texture to the sponge and the maple syrup in the icing gave it a lovely flavour. Will definitely make it again another day, it went down a treat with the guinea pigs at work :-)

Chocolate and peanut butter whoopie pies

Page 164 - Chocolate and peanut butter whoopie pies

My comments on these are similar to the chocolate chip whoopie pies - the sponge was quite dry, almost biscuit-like, but the icing was lovely!

Usually when you make a sponge, you substitute some of the flour for cocoa so the amount of dry ingredients is the same. However in these the cocoa is additonal and I wonder if that's why they're dry... I should test this theory. I also used butter which, again, I can't help wondering if it's made them less fluffy as I never had a problem with the sponge texture before.

On the plus side - Sainsburys now sells Marshmallow Fluff so these aren't such a pain to make any more - no excuse not to keep experimenting I guess!

Chocolate chip whoopie pies

Page 140 - Chocolate chip whoopie pies

I'm not the World's biggest fan of whoopie pies, I prefer a good old cupcake if I'm honest. But - rules are rules and I have to make all recipes in the book - so I was just aiming to improve on my previous attempts.

I usually use Stork for my recipes as I find that a) the results are yummy and b) its a fraction of the cost compared to butter. But I thought I'd use butter this time as my previous whoopie pies have fallen apart as the icing has been too 'sloppy'. The icing was 100% better for using butter so that's definitely noted for next time. However the cakes themselves were a little tough - so I'll stick to Stork for that in the future.

Out of all whoopie pies I've made before, I'd say these were the nicest but I'll keep trying!