Twenty thousand!

Hello you lovely people!
Happy Friday! I am so happy it's Friday, I am going to sleeeeeep this weekend. What are you doing this weekend?

On to some great news (which you might have guessed by the title of this post), this blog reached 20,000 page views yesterday!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who reads this blog. Without you this would not have been as much fun, so thank you for reading, commenting and talking to me! You are all golden!

Now I know there's been a lot of cake on the blog recently, but naturally 20,000 page views called for a celebration of some kind. And if you know me you know that celebration means cake.

I made these vanilla cupcakes based on a recipe by Manuela Kjeilen of passionforbaking.com and then topped them with my favourite frosting (that you can find here).

These vanilla cupcakes are super nice and soft, very spongy and moist, and it's probably because of the heavy cream used in them. Usually you would use milk in a recipe like this, but Manuela's brilliant idea of adding heavy cream really paid off.

Another thing I want to quickly mention before sharing the recipe are these cupcake liners. They are from Dr Oetker and the amazing thing about them - They're edible!

Yeah, I kid you not, you can eat the cupcake liners! They're made of rice, corn and potato, and taste almost like nothing (a friend said it tasted like communion bread). And you don't have to peel it off you can just bite straight through your cupcake now! How amazing is that!

If you're in Sweden, you can find more info about them here. I'm sure other countries in Europe also have these cupcake liners by Dr Oetker. Have any of my American readers ever seen these? Or something similar?

I was really very fascinated by them, and they are such a nice pale pink colour. The only difference in baking is that you have to increase the baking time a couple of minutes. And then you have an entirely edible cupcake - liner and all.

Vanilla Cupcake

Recipe adapted from Manuela Kjeilen's baking show Baka med Manuela, episode 2


INGREDIENTS

• 200 grams butter
• 325 grams sugar
• 4 eggs
• 400 grams flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 5 decilitre heavy cream
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 175°C.

Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time.

Sift the flour and the baking powder in a bowl, and then add some of it to the egg mixture, alternating with the heavy cream. Begin and end with the flour. Add the vanilla.

Pour batter into cupcake liners placed in a cupcake tray.

Bake for about 20-25 minutes, a skewer inserted into the cupcake should come out clean.

Let cool completely before piping on the frosting and adding sprinkles.

For my favourite chocolate frosting, click here.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Much love,

Morning memories

Hello to all you lovely people, and good morning (it's morning somewhere in the world).
A new day has started and as many others, mornings are my worst time of the day. For some reason I can never seem to wake up feeling well rested. I am always a little (usually a lot) tired in the mornings. My bed is more comfortable in the early hours of the day, and it's like there is a glue that is sticking me to my bed. I have severe problems actually getting out of bed, even if I'm looking forward to the day ahead. I do suffer from an autoimmune hormonal disease that does make me more tired and sleepy, so while it might be my disease, I also find that my bed might have some sort of a special power over me. Am I the only one? Or is this something others feel too?

One way to make mornings a little nicer is by having something a little bit special for breakfast. I'm not a breakfast person, I'm usually not hungry in the mornings and simply start my day with a fruit, but having something freshly baked in the morning makes breakfast all the more enjoyable.

I recently attempted (and I daresay succeeded) in making Madeleines, which is a french sponge cake often eaten for breakfast. The Madeleines are made in special Madeleine pans giving one side of the Madeleines their unique scalloped shell shape. The other side is paler and smooth with a hump.

The Madeleine has slightly crispy edges but a soft sponge-like centre and usually tastes mildly of lemon and vanilla. They melt like butter in your mouth and disappear within an instant in my household. They were made famous by Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (In Search of Lost Time).

"The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it."

Madeleines

Recipe adapted from Joy of Baking

INGREDIENTS

• 115 grams butter, melted
• 130 grams flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 eggs
• 100 grams sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest

DIRECTIONS

Melt the butter, but keep it warm.

Beat eggs and sugar until thick and pale. Add the vanilla and lemon zest. Sift and fold in the flour in 3 additions. Add the warm melted butter and stir until just mixed together, do not over mix it. Cover and refrigerate the batter for at least 1-2 hours, preferably over night. 

Preheat oven to 190°C. Grease moulds with melted butter and dust with flour, tapping out the excess. Add about a tablespoon of the batter into each of the shell-shaped moulds. Bake for about 8 to 11 minutes, until edges are golden brown. They are best served the day you make them.

I hope you have a lovely morning with something sweet to bring out your best memories.

Much love,

A Quarter of a Century

It's my 25th Birthday today!!
Yaaay!

After I turned 20 I didn't really want to age anymore. I felt like I didn't really need to get any older to do the things I wanted to (voting), and I felt like the older I would get the less opportunities I would have.

In the last year however I've managed to change my mind. I no longer feel like getting older is bad, and I've learned to embrace my "old soul". So today I couldn't be happier about the fact that it is my birthday. After all it does mean that I get cake. My family has gotten me a princess cake from the best pastry shop in town. A princess cake is a traditional Swedish layer cake filled with pastry cream and topped with delicious marzipan. It is easily the best cake ever!

Because it is my 25th I felt like I needed to go big, so I also made a cake. A chocolate layer cake filled and topped with caramel ganache frosting, and decorated with gorgeous sprinkles. These sprinkles are from Sweetapolita's sprinkle etsy shop (here), and I could not be happier with them. In fact, I bought a whole lot of sprinkles from Sweetapolita, basically emptying my wallet. But it was worth it! These are the prettiest sprinkles I've ever seen. And they did make the cake look amazing!

The cake itself is adapted from the incredible and super talented Manuela Kjeilen's blog Passion for Baking. Her instagram is also one of my favourites to drool over, she's at @passionforbaking. I changed a couple of things about her recipe, I decreased the amount of sugar in the cake, and decreased the amount of butter in the frosting. I also added the cocoa powder with the flour and sifted it, instead of mixing it with the coffee and sour cream. The cake is delicious and wonderfully rich and heavy. It is perfectly chocolatey! You can find Manuela's original recipe here.

Chocolate Caramel Ganache Cake

Recipe adapted from Manuela Kjeilen's blog Passion for Baking

Chocolate sponges

INGREDIENTS

• 250 ml coffee
• 140 ml sour cream
• 335 g flour
• 85 g cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 285 g butter (salted)
• 300 g sugar
• 200 g dark brown sugar
• 4 eggs
• 3 teaspoons vanilla sugar

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 160°C.
Line three 20 cm round baking pans with baking parchment.
Make the coffee, let cool and mix it with the sour cream. Set aside.

Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and baking soda in a bowl. Set aside.

Beat the butter until pale and fluffy, add the sugar and continue beating, until fluffy.
Gradually add the eggs, one by one, beating until it is all well combined. Add the vanilla.

Gradually add the flour mixture and then the coffee mixture, alternating between the two, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.

Divide the batter into the three pans and bake for 30-35 minutes.


Caramel Ganache Frosting

INGREDIENTS

• 200 g sugar
• 65 ml water
• 250 ml heavy cream (whipping cream)
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla sugar
• 450 g dark chocolate, chopped
• 400 g butter, room temperature

DIRECTIONS

Add the sugar and water to a saucepan and place on medium heat until sugar has dissolved. Increase to high heat and bring to a boil, until sugar syrup turns golden brown, do not stir at all at this point. Take the saucepan off the heat and add the heavy cream. Be careful as it will bubble up, and it is very hot. Pour in the vanilla and set back on heat. Let it boil for another minute or two.

Pour the caramel over the chopped dark chocolate. Blend it until smooth. Then gradually add the butter, letting it melt in the hot ganache. Place in fridge for about 30 minutes to 1 hour, when all the butter is added.

Remove from fridge (the frosting will have set at this point) and beat until frosting is smooth and creamy.

Spread some of the frosting onto one of the cakes, place another on top and do the same before adding the last cake. Spread the rest of the frosting on top of and around the cake.

Add some sprinkles and you're done!

This is how happy cake make me!
I just love to bake and eat cake. I find it fun to bake and delicious to eat. I wish I could have shared cake with all of you, but instead I'm going to wish you all the best of days! I hope you guys indulge in something yummy today and celebrate my Birthday with me!

I hope you all have a beautiful day!

Much love,

I Donut Want To Be Without You

Happy Valentine's Day!!

I hope you are all having the best day filled with love and happiness, sharing your time with people who matter to you.

You all matter to me, so on Vday I just want to say thank you for reading this blog. You guys make this a lot more fun! Lots of love to all of you <3

For Valentine's Day I decided to make doughnuts this year. Last year I made cupcakes, but this year I felt like it was time for some doughnuts. I sprinkled my doughnuts with hearts, pearls and red glitter sprinkles - all of it feeling very appropriate for Vday.

And today is all about love, so let me just say this - I LOVE doughnuts!!! And I LOVE sprinkles!!!
I aptly wore my pink doughnut dress, and had the person I love the most (my wee big sister) snap some photos of me while I ate the delicious pink things.

I've shared the recipe I use for these cake doughnuts on the blog before. In fact it was last time I wore this amazing dress for the blog. I just love this dress. Find the recipe here.

Much love on this day and all others,