The second instalment of Operation Buttercream: we hunt for the perfect vanilla cupcake (think Victoria sponge), research colour and fancier flowers and get some decisions from the bride & groom.

The Perfect Vanilla Cupcake

I’m using vanilla cupcakes as a base for the Strawberry Champagne Cupcakes and the White Chocolate Ganache Cupcakes. I want a recipe that uses ordinary ingredients – ordinary flour, butter, milk, eggs, sugar. Not so keen on buttermilk, yoghurt, heavy cream, applesauce and the like. The cupcakes should keep easily 3 to 4 days, being moist and have an even crumb. Extensive research and a couple of test bakes later – I’ve found it. Only nine ingredients but with more elaborate preparation requirements, worth it.

Baking under exam conditions, I was reminded that my oven bakes hot. I’m using foil lined cupcake cases and this also concentrates heat. I used the suggested oven temperature and that resulted in the cupcakes on the right hand side of the photo. If the oven is too hot, the outside of the cupcake bakes more quickly and forces the batter in the centre up into a dome. Second test bake I reduced the oven temperature to 170C and got the smooth surface on the left.

Recipe – Perfect Vanilla Cupcakes

Ingredients

• 150 grams plain flour (not self rising)
• 1 1/4 tsp baking powder 
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 2 eggs medium to large
• 150 g caster sugar (or granulated)
• 60g unsalted butter cut into cubes, can be straight from the refrigerator
• 125 ml full fat milk
• 2 tsp top quality vanilla extract
• 1.5 tsp vegetable oil 

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F (160°C fan) for 20 minutes before starting the batter. Place shelf in the middle of the oven.
2. Place cupcake liners in a standard muffin tin. (makes 12)
3.  Whisk flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Set aside.
4. Heat the milk and butter until the butter is just melted. I do this in a saucepan because it then stays warm. You can also do this in a heatproof bowl in the microwave. If using the microwave, start with 1 minute and then 15 second bursts, you don’t want the milk to boil.
5. Beat the eggs on medium high speed for 30 seconds. Keep the mixer going, add the sugar over another 30 seconds. Turn speed up to high (I used 8 on my KitchenAid) and then beat the eggs and sugar for 6 minutes. It won’t turn into meringue but it will increase in volume and lighten in colour.
6. Incorporate the dry ingredients. After the eggs and sugar are whipped, scatter 1/2 of the flour mixture across surface, then beat on low speed very briefly, no more than 10 seconds. Stop, incorporate the remaining ingredients in the same way. Take a look at the batter, beat only until you can’t see any flour. Don’t beat out all the air you just beat into the eggs & sugar.
7. Pour the still warm milk & butter into the empty flour bowl. Add a generous ladle of batter to the mixture and hand whisk until smooth. This ‘tempers’ the warm milk and butter and means your butter won’t ‘curdle’ (split). Needs to be whisked until smooth and foamy.
8. Turn your stand mixer onto it’s lowest speed and slowly pour the tempered milk and butter in. Beat for 15 seconds. Turn the mixer off. Scrape down the sides and the base, the batter should be very smooth.
9. I pipe batter into the cases. This needs my largest blue piping bags but it reduces waste and gives more control over filling. If you do by hand, use an ice cream trigger scoop. Fill the cases to about 2/3 full. Don’t overfill, you get convex surfaces.
10. Place on the middle rack of the oven; bake for 20 minutes. Check temperature of a cupcake in the centre of the tin, should be above 95 degrees. Cupcakes will be golden and your thermometer will come out clean.

Colour and Fancier Flowers

I will never be a professional standard ‘cupcake decorator’ but am moving on from the basics. A couple of things I was looking for in this next decorating test batch; whiter buttercream, sharper edges on the flowers and getting colour effects with piping. I also want to buttercream to dry out a bit as it’s piped for longevity. Back to the internet we went.

Natural buttercream icing is butter, icing sugar, vanilla and just enough water to make it firm yet pipable. It tastes great but it’s naturally pale yellow rather than white. Here’s a video on making the buttercream wedding white. Essentially you dye it white. I tried two methods, white titanium powder added to the icing sugar and white gel professional standard food colouring. The gel food colouring produced better results and gave me sharper edges on the piped flowers, so we’re sticking with that method for the white icing. The pure white icing is for the carrot cake cupcakes.

Gaining confidence from making icing white and my ease of piping the large roses – time to add some colour. There is a long video from Cornel on colours and piping bags. There are a number of colours and techniques I didn’t need but I watched it through and made pages of notes. There are other techniques to get 2 different colours in the piping bag but the method of putting a stripe of the contrast colour along the seam of the piping bag and filling the rest with the main colour seems intuitively correct and simple to me. It’s a bit difficult to see but the top left cupcake with the green edge is my favourite. I piped the centre rosebud in pure white then all of the rose petals with the green edge.

Decisions from Bride & Groom

A couple of decisions I was looking for; shape and design of the cupcake cases, accent colours based on the bride’s flowers and attendants gowns and sign off on the first two decorating designs. I’m not going to share those yet – will keep you in suspense until the wedding.

Notes on this test bake

• I’ve got some help lined up for the big event – so for washing up, making basics, filling piping bags, etc. But it will be good to have a lot of certain things:
  – piping bags both for the cupcakes and of various strengths for the icing, I can see going through 50 or so with ease,
  – palette knives, straight and pointed. Probably 10 straight ones and 3 pointed ones. Having more will reduce the temptation to wipe and re-use, which creates risk for colour pollution, it would be easy to ruin a large batch of white with a little bit of blue or green,
  – piping tips, Wilton 104 and leaf tips
  – will investigate Russian piping tips, I think may work very well for the white chocolate ganache.

Think pink for the next instalment. And yes, my hands are sore.

I’m enjoying Operation Buttercream, especially because the bride and groom are both very reasonable people. The groom has expressed few strong preferences about the wedding but he does like white chocolate. Hence white chocolate cupcakes are on the menu.

The test bake submitted to the couple for approval is a vanilla cupcake with a filling of white chocolate ganache, a topping layer of the same and white chocolate buttercream icing. My thought process – it’s difficult to make a recognisable white chocolate cake. White chocolate is cocoa butter, sugar and milk. It doesn’t have any cocoa solids in it. As a substance or flavouring it disappears when incorporated into cake batter. A simple vanilla cupcake with a ganache centre will showcase the white chocolate. A thin layer of white chocolate keeps the cake fresh as well as adding flavour.

White chocolate buttercream will hopefully give the best combination of flavour and ease of piping. A full piped rose of white chocolate would possibly send guests into sugar shock.

The cupcakes are this recipe – perfect vanilla cupcakes. High level overview of method – make the cupcakes, cut out a small hole in the centre, then fill and top with white chocolate ganache, make the white chocolate buttercream and ice. Working with white chocolate is straightforward if you’re gentle with it. Buy good quality white chocolate – I use Callebaut cooking chocolate. Don’t use ordinary white chocolate chips they have stabilisers in them.

I found a useful gadget for cutting a uniform hole the centre of the cupcakes. It’s a cheap plastic thing but it doesn’t need to do any heavy work so it works fine.

Recipe – White chocolate ganache filling

The ganache needs to cool so make it about 30 minutes before you want to use it. If you’re making the cupcakes the same day, they need to cool completely as well.

Ingredients

• 175 grams white chocolate
• 60 mls heavy cream

Method

1. In a small glass or plastic bowl combine the white chocolate and the heavy cream.
2. Heat in the microwave for 1 minute, then let the mixture sit for another minute.
3. Stir until smooth, then cover the ganache with plastic wrap and set it aside to cool.
4. Once cooled, pipe the ganache into the cupcakes. Then pipe a thin layer on the top of the cupcakes. Tip: Pipe all the centres first and then the top layer. This allows the filling to cool and provide a firm base for the top layer.

Recipe – White chocolate buttercream icing

Ingredients

• 85 grams white chocolate
• 60 mls heavy cream
• 225 grams unsalted butter – room temperature
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp fine salt (1g)
• 450 grams icing sugar

Method

1. Combine the white chocolate and heavy cream is a microwave proof bowl. Heat in the microwave for 1 minute, then let the mixture sit for 1 minute. Mix until combined, then place the bowl in the fridge to cool for 10 minutes.
2. Beat the butter at a medium speed for 1 minute until smooth and fluffy. 
3. Add the white chocolate mixture to the butter, then add the vanilla and salt. Beat on medium speed until well blended. Tip: If using a stand mixer, make sure to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl well. The chocolate mixture will settle to the bottom.
4. Add 1/2 of the icing sugar on a low speed. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed with a rubber spatula. Tip: Throw a tea towel over the top of the stand mixer, it reduces the cloud of sugar in the air. When well incorporated, add the remaining sugar.
5. Beat on a medium speed for a couple minutes until the ingredients are fully incorporated.
6. Adjust the consistency of the icing – add heavy cream a tablespoon at a time if too thick and if too thin, add icing sugar a heaping tablespoon at a time.

Notes on this test bake

• I used titanium dioxide powder to make the icing white. My intuition was that the powdered food colouring would blend better with the white chocolate buttercream. It worked well so will stick with it. I used about a tablespoon for the icing for a dozen cupcakes.
• Buttercream icing (all types) needs to be made in a mixer. But I have started ‘finishing it’ in the food processor (found in a Youtube video). Makes more washing up (one of my personal dislikes is washing up the food processor) but it reduces air, smooths out the buttercream and allows for minor adjustments of colour and texture.
• I experimented with a Russian piping tip but got blobs of icing rather than flowers. This may need practice.
• I don’t discard leftover icing, I keep it in the fridge and take it out to practice or use for experimenting with colours and shapes.

Thank you for reading the blog – let me know if you have questions or suggestions.

Autumn has arrived in England and soup is back on the menu. My mother wasn’t big on prepared or convenience food when we were young. One thing that slipped through her objections was Campbells Bean & Bacon soup. It was my favourite. Time to re-create Bean & Bacon as part of my project to reclaim convenience foods.

I use dried beans in my cooking, they are easier to store than canned beans and last more or less forever. Covid lockdowns made me a bit of a hoarder and some of my dried beans are from 2020. Still good. The other reason to use dried beans is that you can use the ‘hot soak’ method to soften them. Hot soak method reduces the amount of gas that bean dishes produce in humans. Nothing eliminates the consequences of bean consumption but hot soak, in my experience, reduces it significantly.

The recipe below includes instructions for using dried beans and canned beans. The only difference is cooking time. A mini-chopper is very useful for the vegetables and a stick blender great to puree some soup to thicken.

Let’s cook.

Recipe

Ingredients

380 grams (2 cups by volume) dried white beans (navy beans) OR 2 x 425 gram (15 ounce) cans of beans

8 strips of smoked streaky bacon, cut into small pieces

Lard or butter to sauté bacon and vegetables

1 medium onion, finely diced

3 medium carrots, diced

3 stalks of celery, diced

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

110 grams (4 tablespoons) tomato paste

500 mls (2 cups) of pork or ham stock

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

2 tablespoons of brandy or cognac

Method

1. If using dried beans, follow instructions here for soaking methods. Otherwise, open your tins of beans.
2. Preheat the oven to 180C (350F).
3. Sautè the bacon until crisp in the lard or butter in a large deep oven proof casserole (Dutch oven) or a skillet. Your le Creuset or similar is perfect. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon to drain on kitchen towel.
4. Add the onions to the pan and cook over medium high heat until transparent. Pour the brandy over the onions and turn up to high to cook off the alcohol.
5. Return heat to medium, add the carrots and the celery and cook until they start to soften – 5 minutes or so.
6. Add the spices and the tomato paste, stir to coat the vegetables well. Add the stock and the beans and bring to a simmer. Stir in the bacon.
7. Put the cover on the pot and transfer to the oven. Check once an hour or so, stir and add more water if necessary. Canned beans – may be ready in 90 minutes, if you started with dried beans the soup may take 2 1/2 or 3 hours for the beans to reach the desired softness.
8. Remove from the oven; transfer one or two ladles of beans to your blender or liquidiser. Blend and return to the soup to thicken it.
9. Garnish with additional crispy bacon or slices of sausage if desired, serve warm with crusty bread.
   

Thank you for reading the blog. Let me know how the recipe works (or doesn’t) for you in the comments or tag me on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.

We have a weekly delivery of box of organic vegetables. It’s a self imposed challenge to use up whatever they send. I’ve got 3 choices for ‘do not send’ – these are currently occupied by beetroot (beets you Americans), Brussell sprouts and avocado. It’s not just organic – they work hard on reducing the travel miles on the vegetables. Hence, the humble swede appears frequently in the box.

Why is it called rutabaga in America? And what is a turnip if its not a baby swede? Who knows, the weird and wonderful names of vegetables are beyond my expertise.

When a boring root vegetable appears – soup is the answer. Oven roasting does wonders for root vegetables going into soup, really adds a layer of taste. It’s worth the extra prep time and clean up. I like to really scorch the swede just to the edge of burnt. I did it by accident – oh the dangers of multi tasking a well known recipe – and now it’s required by the Davinator.

Handy tools for this recipe: parchment paper for roasting, a mandolin for slicing in the vegetables, a stick blender to puree the soup at the end. Or a good sized blender. Can also be done in a food processor but both of those alternatives add messy clean up steps.

I add croutons and sautéed chorizo to make the soup a meal. If you’re feeling a need for more vegetables, a green salad on the side would be lovely.

Make this recipe vegan by omitting the butter and avoiding cream or chorizo.

Let’s get cooking.

Ingredients

The recipe proportions are for 450 grams of swede. Adjust if your swede is larger or smaller. Usually larger, in my experience.

• 1 swede, peeled and cut into 2 cm (1 inch) cubes
• olive oil
• salt and pepper
• 1 onion (mandolin into the soup or chop well)
• 2 tablespoons of brandy (trust me)
• 2 medium carrots (mandolin into the soup or chop well)
• 2 stalks of celery (mandolin into the soup or chop well)
• 1 tablespoon dried thyme
• 1.25 litres vegetable stock
• Optional garnish: cream, croutons, fried chorizo
• Plain bread croutons – 6 to 8 generous sized croutons per bowl of soup
• 50 grams of chorizo per bowl of soup

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 180C(fan)200C(nonfan)/400F
2. Peel the swede and cut into 2 cm (1 inch) cubes
3. Put some olive, salt and pepper in a bowl, add the cubes of swede and toss
4. Line baking trays with parchment paper and put the well coated swede in a single layer on the baking trays. Don’t crowd the cubes together because then it steams more than roasts.
5. Roast for 20 mins, remove, turn thoroughly with a spatula, return to the oven for another 20 minutes. Keep an eye on the swede, you want to caramelise not burn but the more brown the better.
6. Meanwhile, heat another tablespoon of olive oil and a similar amount of butter in a large deep saucepan. Add the onions – either pre-chopped or mandolin. Cook over medium heat until well translucent. Pour the brandy or cognac over the onions and turn up the heat to burn off the alcohol. (Sniff the vapours, you’ll know when the alcohol is gone).
7. Return pan heat to medium, add the carrots, celery and thyme. Cook for another five minutes, add the stock and the roasted swede.
8. Bring to a gentle boil, cover and cook for 25-30 minutes. Turn the heat down once you’ve covered the mixture so it’s just ticking over.
9. Purée the soup by your chosen method – if you tneed the exercise, you can put the soup through a ricer or a potato press as an alternative. Return the soup to the pan and cover while you prepare the garnish.
10. If you’re adding chorizo, slice into diagonal rounds and add to a warm skillet, sauté to release the oil and throw the croutons in. The chorizo will shrink and look a bit dry but it makes the flavour more concentrated and the fried croutons are little flavour bombs.
11. Serve in pre-warmed bowls, with a swirl of cream if you want and your choice of garnish.

Thank you for reading and sharing the blog and the recipes. Tag me on Twitter or Instagram @mamadolson if you post a photo.

Five ingredient omelette.

I have a friend who loves food and hates to cook. By special request, I’m going to establish a special category of recipes on the website – known as the Love Food Hate Cooking recipes. Scrambled eggs on toast was the traditional default dinner of a busy single woman. My omelette recipe takes only a bit more time and effort but is extremely versatile.

The trick to the easy perfect omelette is to start it on the stove top, finish it under the grill and never ever flip it. All you need is butter, eggs, filling(s) and an oven proof skillet. The omelette above is made using crab, parmesan cheese and chives. It is infinitely flexible on ingredients and combination – any kind of cheese, protein that’s precooked (ham, smoked, salmon, thinly sliced sausage, cooked chicken, etc), vegetables that have been properly prepared. Both the recipe and method are straightforward.

I use a le Creuset skillet – they are expensive but stand the test of time. My youngest son is 25 years old and I have le Creuset cookware that predates him. There are other brands of enamelled cast iron cookware that will work well – the heavy bottom pan makes a difference.

Let’s get cooking.

Recipe

Ingredients – two servings

Butter, plenty of it

4 eggs

Tablespoon of dairy – milk, yogurt, cream – any unsweetened dairy (optional)

150 grams of crab meat

40 grams of finely grated parmesan cheese

Handful of chives

Method

1. Beat the eggs with the spoonful of dairy. Including dairy makes the omelette a bit fluffy, it’s optional though.
2. Melt butter in the oven proof skillet – plenty of butter to coat the bottom and sides of the skillet. Don’t let the butter brown.
3. Turn the heat down to medium-low and add the eggs to the skillet. Cooking the omelette a bit more slowly at a lower heat keeps the eggs from turning tough or rubbery.
4. Preheat your grill at this point.
5. Cook until the edges and bottom of the egg mixture are starting to firm up. You should be able to run a rubber spatula around the edge. Carefully add the crab meat, then the cheese and herbs.
6. Place under the grill and cook until lightly browned and fluffy. Depending on the heat of your grill – this is likely to be 5 to 10 minutes.

The omelette just before it goes under the grill.

Thank you for reading the blog and cooking the recipes. Let me know how it goes and send requests.