Easter and Happiness

Hello all,
and Happy Easter!

It's been almost two months since my last post, and while I feel a bit bad for not having posted anything in this time I've honestly never felt better... Those of you who follow me on Instagram will know that I feel great health-wise. As I said in a post on IG, usually me not being active on here would mean that I'm not doing too good. Previously it has been during my rough times with bouts of strong depression or anxiety where I've not been around here. But I am very happy to say that my health hasn't been this good for years. I can barely remember the last time I was doing so well mentally, and I am also really happy to boot. I am however quite busy, with work and other things... Good things.

Again, if you've seen my IG lately you will know that I now have a boyfriend, and he is making me so happy it's ridiculous. I've never been the type of person to leave my happiness to someone else. I believe that you need to make yourself happy, and to be honest, I never understood what the big deal about a romantic relationship was. I still hold on to the fact that your happiness lies within you, but I'm definitely understanding the big whoop about a partner. It's like icing on a cake, it heightens my happiness, makes everything that much sweeter.

Anyway, so that's what's been going on in my life, work and boyfriend are keeping me busy, and blogging has taken a backseat. For Easter I had to bake though, so without further ado, here is my Easter bake.

As by tradition, I made cupcakes for Easter, with chocolate eggs from Lindt and they were delicious. Also, my sprinkles are from Sweetapolita.

I hope you all have a fantastic Easter with a bit of spring (in my city it's snowing...).
Much love,

Brownie cupcakes with White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

Hello all!
I hope you are having a majorly awesome week. I'm so busy at work I hardly have the time to breathe - but it's good. I love being busy with my research. Things are finally happening in my project and it is seriously exciting.

Having been so intensely busy my baking has taken a back seat. I don't find the energy to bake after the workday and during the weekends I'm so busy with other things. However, this weekend I finally had the time and energy to do some light baking. What better to reintroduce myself to baking with than cupcakes.

I know cupcakes are a bit "out", but I don't care. I love cupcakes! I love baking them! And I love eating them!

I used a brownie recipe and added a white chocolate cream cheese frosting to it. Find the recipe of both the brownie cupcakes and the frosting below.

Brownie Cupcakes

INGREDIENTS

• 150 grams dark chocolate, chopped
• 110 grams butter, cut into pieces
• 15 grams cocoa powder
• 150 grams sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 eggs
• 95 grams flour
• 100 grams walnuts, chopped

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 175°C.

Line a cupcake tin with 12 paper liners.

Melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl over a saucepan of heated water. Add the cocoa, sugar and vanilla, whisk. Whisk in the eggs, one at a time. Stir in the flour. Add the chopped walnuts.

Add about a half decilitre to each cupcake liner.

Bake for about 15-18 minutes.

Let cool before adding the frosting.

White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

INGREDIENTS

• 200 grams white chocolate, chopped
• 1,5 dl heavy cream
• 200 grams cream cheese
• Pink food colouring, optional

DIRECTIONS

Heat the heavy cream in a saucepan until just before it starts boiling. Pour over the white chocolate and stir until smooth. Place in fridge for a couple of hours to overnight, until it firms up.

With an electric mixer, whisk the ganache until a bit fluffy, then add the cream cheese and continue whisking until smooth and pipeable. Add some food colouring if desired.

Pipe onto the brownie cupcakes with an closed star tip.

I added beautiful sprinkles from Sweetapolita (here) to my cupcakes. I adore these sprinkles and find it hard to resist putting them on everything I bake!

I hope you all like this recipe. Let me know if you try it!

Wish you all an amazing rest of the week.

Much love,

Mona

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,

A Sweet Treat

A sweat treat for Valentine's day?
Why not wear it!

I'm so in love with this cupcake jumper. The moment I saw it I knew it had to be an addition to my wardrobe. It's so very "me" (she says about yet another clothing item with cupcakes on it).

Valentine's day is approaching, and I don't really celebrate it in any other way than eating some yummy treat and wearing something cute (preferably red). I'm a bit ambivalent about Valentine's day. It really is capitalist bollocks, but at the same time I sort of like a day to celebrate love.

I get bothered by people who seem to think that Valentine's day is simply for romantic love. I think it is a day where we should celebrate all kinds of love, including platonic love and self-love! Valentine's day does not have to be about being in a relationship, and it annoys me that people are anti-Vday because they are single. You can be single and celebrate Valentine's day anyway!! A life without romantic love is not a life without love.

Yes, media especially Hollywood films, seem to equal love to romantic love. It's like the value of other types of love have diminished over the years. The only love worth having is that of romantic love. But as someone who has never been in a romantic relationship - my love is worth just as much as your love, even if it is platonic! Just saying...

Now that I've done my preaching I'll go back to the outfit. I'm particularly happy with this outfit, and it feels like it is the perfect one for a day filled with treats (Vday!!). I adore the little collar clips that I got from the etsy shop, Femme De Bloom. They are so cute and I feel like the enhance the cupcake on my jumper.

I also love the small heels of BAIT footwear's Ione model. And it is surprisingly comfortable, which made me very happy to find out, as I had only bought flats from BAIT previously. I've got one pair of Ione's and one pair of Ida's, and I think the Ione's are more comfortable. What do you think? I know BAIT footwear is super popular amongst my followers on IG, so I'd love to hear which of BAIT's models you find to be the most comfortable.

Collar clips: Femme De Bloom (here)

Blouse: H&M (old)

Jumper: Unique Vintage (here)

Dress worn as skirt: Closet via ModCloth (old)

Heels: BAIT footwear via Unique Vintage (here)

Nutella Cupcakes

Today is no ordinary day - it's World Nutella Day!!

I love Nutella. I mean, really LOVE Nutella. I've mentioned it before, I'm a Nutella nutter. I think Nutella is delicious on bread, on fruit, in fudge (check out my Nutella fudge here), on its own... In fact, the most usual way I eat it is straight out of the jar. How do you eat Nutella? I'm curious.

Another great thing about Nutella is that it is good for baking. I whipped up these Nutella cupcakes in no time at all, and it is a super easy recipe, with very few ingredients. Just four really. You need eggs, flour, whipping cream and of course -- Nutella.

Nutella Cupcakes

Base

INGREDIENTS

• 400 grams Nutella
• 4 eggs
• 160 grams flour

DIRECTIONS

Preheat your oven to 175°C.

Whisk the eggs with the Nutella. It's difficult at first, but it will come together. Add the flour and blend until even. Pour batter into cupcake tins and bake for 10-15 minutes. It's done when the top springs back when you lightly press it. Let cool before adding the frosting.

Frosting

INGREDIENTS

• 2 big tablespoons Nutella
• 3 dl whipping cream

DIRECTIONS

Whip the cream until stiff peaks. Mix a third of the whipped cream with the Nutella. Then gently fold the Nutella mixture into the rest of the whipped cream, being careful not to let the air you've whipped into it deflate. Pipe the frosting on top of the cooled bases.

I added sprinkles to my Nutella cupcakes because sprinkles make everything better! Even the flawless Nutella is better with a bit of sprinkles!

So, my friends, don't forget to celebrate this yummy-yummy day by eating some Nutella!

Much love,