Back Forest Butterfly Cakes

I've managed to hold off my baking for a couple of weeks, but I couldn't keep it up any longer. The following recipe had taken my fancy and I just had to give it a try.

I'd only read through the ingredients list before going shopping and had already decided to also add some Kirsch to it, I think it would work ever so nice with the Black Forest theme. Certainly chef Rachel Allen is generous with it in her creations.

However our supermarket didn't carry Kirsch, in fact nothing even remotely like it, but I spotted a group of "cherry brandy liqueur" bottles trying to pass themselves off as alco-pops, so I grabbed one of them, hoping that it would work anyway.

Of course, adding liquid to a sponge mixture means that the dry ingredients need to be increased or the consistency will be wrong. OK, I decided to increase the flour. My initial thought had been to add the Kirsch to the icing, but Lundulph pointed out that this would limit when they could be eaten... so the booze would have to go into the sponge itself.

At this point I read through the instructions and also realised that it is a heavily branded recipe. But no way I'll go and buy things I already have at home, just because they aren't the right brand! What was a bit disturbing was that everything should be mixed together in one go - normally it's the sugar and butter first or sugar and eggs first, then flour and baking powder to be sifted and mixed together well... My gut feeling was right, I should have done things more traditionally, however mixing everything in one go worked a lot better than I expected.

Ingredients
Makes 12

150 g caster sugar
150 g unsalted butter at room temperature
150 g plain flour
25 g cocoa powder
1 tbsp baking powder
3 medium eggs at room temperature
3 tbsp cherry brandy liqueur
1 tsp vanilla extract
200 g ready-made chocolate flavoured icing
red glacé cherries
edible silver shimmer spray

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C (gas mark 4). Line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper cases.
2. Place the caster sugar and butter in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder, then stir together to mix well and add to the sugar and butter.
3. Add the eggs, liqueur and vanilla extract, then whisk with an electric whisk until smooth and fluffy.
4. Distribute the batter between the muffin cases, they should be about two-thirds full so as to rise and form domes during baking.
5. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes until they are ready (test with a toothpick - it should come out clean), then remove from the oven and onto a wire rack and allow to cool completely.
6. Using a serrated knife carefully cut off a lid from each muffin, then cut the lids in two.
7. Pipe some of the icing on the cut surfaces of the muffins, then carefully push in the two dome halves to form butterfly wings.
   
8. Place a glacé cherry in the middle and finish with lightly spraying with shimmer spray - careful not to over-do it.

The instructions did say to make sure to fill the cases enough so that domes form and sadly I got over-excited to the point that I only got 11 muffins. And I was scientific about it - weighing the batter and dividing by 12, but mysteriously it didn't quite work out. 56 g of batter per case resulted in this:



No more than 50 g next time in each muffin case, I think.

Spread out muffins meant the domes I cut out were too big, but this was easier to sort out, I just cut out a strip in the middle of each dome:

I only decorated two yesterday and thought I'd decorate the others on a per need basis. As it turned out, when I opened the lid of the cake box a moment ago, the muffin surfaces had gone a bit soggy and it was barely possible to make the butterfly tops. So these should be done on the day only.

The silver shimmer spray was quite cool, it made a huge difference visually - sadly I wasn't able to capture it well on camera:

But the best thing was the cherry brandy liqueur. I did have a little sip before adding some to the muffin batter and it was delish! And it works really nicely in the muffins too. Though the ready made icing was quite over-powering and sweet, I piped too much yesterday and the flavour of the muffins was lost, however in my second attempt, I was more measured and the lovely cherry flavour came through. I'll add the cherry liqueur to the icing next time and make it myself, so it's not so sweet.

Inspired by Soto Maior

While I was getting salmon fillets for our lovely dinner the other day, I also spotted some very nice looking rainbow trout.

My plan was to do it en croute with wild mushrooms, but I decided to look through my recipe collection for inspiration and a good thing too, I found it in a booklet advert for some brand of cooking oil from 1993. The original recipe is for zander à la Soto Maior, but it calls for deep frying it, so I decided to just use the marinating part. The recipe said minimum 2 h of marinating, another recipe stated at least 4, so I decided to let the fish marinate overnight.

Ingredients

150 g finely chopped shallots
2 finely sliced lemons, pips removed
600 g rainbow trout fillets
2.5 dl grapeseed oil
500 g piece of puff pastry
a handful of coarsely cut flat leaf parsley
1 egg yolk
3 dl single cream
4 dl parboiled girolles
salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Prepare the shallots and the lemons, then remove the skin from the trout fillets and check for any bones. Remove these with tweezers. Cut the fillets into 4 or even 6 pieces.
2. Place a third of the shallots at the bottom of a glass dish, then place some of the fish and some of the lemon slices. Repeat the layering, finishing with a layer of lemons.
3. Pour over the grapeseed oil (actually any flavourless cooking oil will do). Cover with cling film and put in the fridge.
4. When ready to complete the dish, pre-heat the oven to 220 degrees C (gas mark 7). Also place a thick-bottomed baking sheet upside-down in the oven to heat up as well.
5. Roll out the pastry to about 0.5 cm thickness and cut in two, one piece a little larger than the other.
6. Take the pieces of fish out from the marinade and pat dry with kitchen towels, it's OK if some of the shallot pieces remain on them.
   
7. Arrange them on the smaller piece of puff pastry, leaving about a cm around the edge clear. Sprinkle the parsley over the fish.
8. Brush the clear edge with a little egg yolk, then place the larger piece of puff pastry on top and gently press around the edges to make it stick. Use the remainder of the yolk to brush on the top of the puff pastry. Make a few holes to allow steam to come out.
   
9. Bake until the puff pastry has risen well and turned a nice dark golden brown.
   

Soto Maior or vicount António de Soto Maior da Cunha was the Portugese ambassador to Sweden starting in 1856, who remained in Sweden until his death in 1894. According to the Swedish wikipedia, he was a very colourful personality, who was also very interested in food and the recipe for zander à la Soto Maior is part of his legacy.

A quick google search showed some variations of the original dish, but the key parts - zander, marinade, deep fried and accompanied by mushrooms stewed in cream are all there.

After marinating the fish overnight, some of the pieces had gone pale pink and looked a little like gravad lax. Actually I only had just under half of the amount, so we ended up with a rather thin pie. Also, I didn't let it bake for long enough, so the bottom puff pastry was undercooked and soggy. Perhaps I should have rolled it even thinner, but as it was, I ended up with quite a lot to spare. I wrapped it tightly in cling film and put back in the fridge, hopefully I'll get an idea what to do with it over the next couple of days.

Lundulph really liked this one and I agree, it was indeed tasty, though I think the onions were a bit over-powering, I'll reduce them for next time, but I'm quite pleased with the end result.

Pan-fried Salmon

Recently I'd started having a hankering for pan-fried salmon. No idea where this came from, especially since I'm not a fan of fish on the whole, yet there it was and I decided to act on it.

I was hoping to get some Jersey Royal potatoes, but sadly there weren't any, Spring has been late this year. But I picked up a small bag of new baby potatoes along with the two salmon fillets and a jar of Hollandaise sauce. It's a pity that our supermarkets don't do fresh Hollandaise, it's so much nicer than the stuff in the jars. I should probably try and make some myself.

As it also happened, Lundulph had worked late and wasn't home yet, so I set the potatoes to steam, while I laid the table.

Half-way through cooking, I heated up about 50 g of butter in a large non-stick pan, rinsed the fillets and placed them to fry, skin side down.

I grated some lemon zest on top and sprinkled some tarragon leaves. After about 7 minutes, I turned the steaks over and let them fry for a further 5 minutes. Just to be on the safe side, I fried them for a couple of minutes on the two remaining sides as well.

For the plating I peeled some cucumber and sliced it very thinly, then drizzled balsamic vinegar over it. Once I'd plated the salmon, I drizzled the butter from the pan over it. I believe it's called beurre noisette and it's tasty.

On the whole, I thought it was a lovely and quick dinner to make. Lundulph was more reserved in his praise.

Student food

The other day when I was in the supermarket, they had some lovely looking mushrooms on offer, so I couldn't resist to buy 3 punnets, each of 300 g.

There was no plan to this purchase at all at the time, but when I got home, I decided to do what I used to do quite regularly while I was at uni - baked with fillings.

I lined a tray with baking paper and pre-heated the oven to 200 degrees C (gas mark 6).

It's important to use mushrooms which have "matured", i. e. where the caps have opened to let the spores out. These are easier to handle, the stems are easier to remove and the cups are easier to peel. So do just that, then place the cups in the tray.

Sprinkle a little salt over them and place your chosen filling inside each. I used cheese for mine - some mystery cheddar-type cheese which I got from the butcher's and which was tasty and I tried some grated parmesan on a couple of the mushrooms.

For Lundulph obviously cheese was not an option, his mushroom cups had pieces of cooked ham with a small piece of butter at the bottom.

The whole thing baked for about 30 minutes, I didn't keep track of time, but I kept checking on the bake regularly. The idea is to let it bake long enough for the mushrooms to bake through completely, yet not to burn the filling.

Delish! Other fillings I used to do at uni were diced bacon, peperoni and butter with crushed garlic. Should definitely be eaten warm.

Easter baking

Once again Easter was upon us, the family were going to visit and I baked kozunak.

As my recipe has been working reliably for a number of years, there was no reason to try something new. Instead I wanted to make the 8-stranded plaited loaf which was one of the technical challenges on the Great British Bake-Off.

However, it appears that my frustration over my new job went straight into the dough, because it was as tough as an old boot. Or perhaps the yeast was old, though I do try to make sure this doesn't happen.

Anyway, after much adjustments with milk and what felt like an eternity of manual kneading, I divided up the dough into 3 equal parts. One of these, I divided further into 8 and rolled out to strands.

Starting by firmly squeezing one end of all the strands together, I started to follow the rather complex instructions and started despairing almost immediately, as the instructions didn't really seem to produce anything remotely plaited and I began to suspect bits of them were missing!

However I persisted and a good thing too, because the result was fabulously pretty. I think. And no instruction steps were missing, you just need to be patient and keep at it.

Some proofing, some egg wash and a generous sprinkle of pearl sugar it was ready to go in the oven.

Not too much rise during the proofing sadly, but baked quite well overall and disappeared quickly as usual when the family gathers. In hindsight, I should have skipped the pearl sugar, so that the plaiting would be more obvious.

And of course I made two rolls with raisins from the other two parts of the dough. That was fairly straight-forward with a hot tip from I can't remember where: soaking the raisins before using them. This way, they won't take away moisture from the dough. I soaked them in water with a tablespoon of dark rum, which worked a treat and the rolls were very tasty indeed.

Mazarins

The third thing I baked for our afternoon tea was real mazarins.

Yes, I finally got my act together and opted for the recipe in the book "277 types of cakes". It is a bit fiddlier to do and at least one instruction was incomplete, but on the whole well worth the effort. They are called "Classical", however, I had to make some changes to the recipe, so I won't call them that. I used ready-made marzipan, though there are instructions on how to make it at home. And I didn't make true fondant for the final decoration, I don't have a marble slab and didn't have any time to spare in making it. Instead I opted for royal icing as I had a couple of egg whites left-over from the pastry cream I made for the coconut tops. The recipe calls for marzipan of type "50-50", also called "tant pour tant", meaning equal parts of almonds and sugar. I suspect shop-bought marzipan has some additives, but I believe a 50% almonds does the trick.

The amounts given are for 30 mazarins and in Sweden they are all the same size, in oval aluminium cases and weighing about 70 g each. However, the only aluminium cases I could find were round and smaller.

Ingredients for the filling
500 g marzipan with 50% almonds
250 g unsalted butter at room temperature
250 g eggs (about 5 medium sized)

1. It is absolutely crucial that all ingredients are at room temperature or the filling will split.
2. Break up the marzipan into small chunks into a large bowl, then using one hand, add a third of the butter and work it in to form a smooth mixture.
   
   This takes some time, but it's important not to incorporate too much air into the filling or it will puff up during baking.
3. Add the next third of the butter and incorporate well, before incorporating the final third and achieving a lump-free goo.
4. Now the mixture should be soft enough to be mixed with a spoon. Stir in the eggs, one at a time, incorporating well and stop just after the last egg is in.
   
5. If not using immediately, cover the surface with cling film, making sure no air bubbles are trapped, and keep in the fridge.
6. Let warm up to room temperature before using it.

The shortcrust pastry is called 1 - 2 - 3 because of the proportions of the ingredients. Eggs are added to make it easier to roll. It can be done in a mixer, but it's better done manually, so that the dough doesn't get over worked.

Ingredients for the dough
600 g plain flour
400 g unsalted butter at room temperature
200 g granulated sugar
100 g eggs (about 2 medium sized)

1. Sift the flour onto the work surface and make a well.
2. Place the butter and sugar in the middle, then pinch together into a crumbly mixture.
   
3. Add the eggs and work together to a dough, then place in a plastic bag, squeeze out all the air, tie it tightly and let rest in the fridge for at least 1 h.
   
4. The dough should be rolled while cold.

I prepared the above on Thursday and kept in the fridge, then took out early on Saturday morning to warm out, while I worked on the coconut tops.

And so yesterday, I put things together.

1. Pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees C.
2. Arrange round aluminium cases on trays which have a lip along the edges. The cases can glide easily, the lip will stop them from dropping on the floor.
3. Dust the work surface with some flour, then roll out a piece of the dough to 3 mm thickness.
.
4. Using a round cookie cutter, cut out rounds and place in the aluminium cases. The cutter should be a little larger than the cases. Gently press the dough into each case.
5. Place the mazarin filling in a piping bag, cut off a hole of about 2 cm diameter or use a large plain tip and pipe into the dough cases. Fill up to about three-quarters.
6. Bake for about 18 - 23 minutes, until the mazarins are golden brown.
   
7. Prepare the royal icing - place 3 - 4 dl of icing sugar in a bowl and start adding egg white, a couple of tsp at a time and stir in before adding more. Continue until the consistency is thin enough to be "self levelling", but not too runny. Keep covered until it should be used.
8. Remove the mazarins from the oven and let cool enough so they can be handled.
9. Place about a tsp of royal icing on top of a mazarin and spread it over the surface with a knife or spatula.
10. Best served on the day of baking, but should be OK for a day or two afterwards as well. Ready baked mazarins can be frozen before being iced.

Well, I actually only made 15 mazarins, the rest of the dough and filling are now happily biding their time in the freezer. We still have way too many sweet things to eat. Certainly the coconut tops were well received and the younger of our guests found it very hard to stop eating the chewy fudge biscuits and had to be told off.

The mistake I made was to pipe too much filling, so my mazarins mushroomed a bit. This means that I have more dough than filling left, but that's easy to remedy.

Lundulph's verdict: very nice.

A further comment on the "classical" mazarins - as I mentioned before, they should really be glazed with runny fondant. But in order to do that, they need to first be glazed with apricot glaze. This is called "aprikotyr" in Swedish and I went ahead and made it, but here is where the instructions let me down - the simple, yet very important bit about glazing the mazarins with the apricot glaze while it is still hot. Because once it had cooled, it was like jelly. This practice is to prevent the fondant from soaking up moisture from the mazarin and going soggy. However, when using royal icing, this doesn't happen, so I made it in vain. But I've frozen it too, might get to use it at a later date.

Update 25th March: Due to the much-ness of all the baking, I froze a number of the ready glazed mazarins and thawed them earlier this week. Guess what, they were absolutely fine, perhaps a bit on the crumbly side perhaps. For Easter Sunday, I'll thaw the dough and filling and make some more. By the way, I thawed the mazarins by just leaving them out in the kitchen, nothing fancy at all.

Coconut tops 2

I was originally planning to make these on Tuesday already, however, I was quite tired and then other things came in the way, so I ended making these early this morning.

This is a slightly more advanced recipe than the one I've done before. It is from my Swedish book "277 types of cakes".

First, I had to make "vaniljkräm" or "vanilla cream", which is basically crème pâtissière or pastry cream. I made half of the given amount, as I was low on eggs by this point. The cream turned out very nice, even though I made some minor alterations to it. I think it would work rather nicely as filling for macaroons too.

Pastry Cream
Ingredients 250 g full milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
60 g egg yolks (about 3, from medium sized eggs)
62 g granulated sugar
20 g cornflour
12 g unsalted butter
Method

1. Place the milk in a thick-bottomed saucepan and add the vanilla essence, then bring to the boil. As soon as it boils, remove from the heat and let stand for 10 - 15 minutes.
2. In the mean time, beat together yolks, sugar and cornflour until pale and fluffy.
3. Once the milk has completed its "rest", pour it into the egg mixture and whisk together until the mixture is smooth.
4. Pour the whole mixture back into the saucepan, place it back on the hob and bring to the boil again, while stirring constantly.
5. Once it comes to the boil, add the butter and stir it in, then remove from the heat. At this point the cream will thicken dramatically.
6. Continue to whisk until completely smooth, then transfer to a shallow large dish, cover the surface with cling film and cool as quickly as possible - place in a fridge or in cold water.

According to the book, the pastry cream is good for 1 - 2 days if kept in the fridge, the quicker it is cooled down, the longer it will last. Freezing is also good, and should be done as soon as possible. Once thawed, it will most likely split, this is fixed by heating it up in the microwave and stirring it through.

Ingredients 90 g pastry cream
450 g dessicated coconut
150 g eggs (about 3 medium sized eggs)
75 g unsalted butter at room temperature
225 g granulated sugar
300 g dark chocolate (optional)

1. Line 3 baking sheets with baking paper.
2. Stir together all ingredients until well combined.
3. Using your hands, form balls about the size of golf balls (or 30 g), then shape into cones and place on the baking sheets.
4. Leave to dry for at least 1 h.
5. Pre-heat the oven to 210 degrees and bake until they go golden brown on top, about 15 - 18 minutes.
6. Leave to cool completely on the baking sheets.
7. Optional: Melt and temper the chocolate, then dip the bottoms of each cone and allow to set.

As I mentioned, I was low on eggs and had 3 whites over from the pastry cream, so instead of 3 whole eggs in the recipe above, I used two and topped up with egg white to reach the required 150 g. I think this meant the coconut tops were a little paler than they should have been. But I have come across recipes with only egg whites, making the coconut tops completely white.

The book states that each cone should be 50 g, but I tried this and I think that was too much, 30 g size is better. This resulted in 32 coconut tops.

I skipped the chocolate - I have yet to master the art of tempering. Besides I was running out of time. An alternative, you can put the melted, tempered chocolate in a small piping bag and drizzle over the coconut tops.

These were very nice, but not as sweet as I expected. Lundulph liked the texture and he does like coconut. I'm thinking that perhaps some lemon zest mixed in there might be nice. Lundulph wrinkled his nose.

Kolakakor

We've invited some friends over for afternoon tea on Saturday and as I'm working in the City since a week ago, I need to start well ahead, since I also have to do a number of shopping excursions to get the ingredients.

So I started by buying most things today and making something quick. Thus the fudge biscuits. Besides, Lundulph has been asking for chewy biscuits for ages. The recipe is from my Swedish book on 277 types of cakes. It also utilises some ingredients that aren't readily available in the UK, so here is my version.

Ingredients
Makes about 60 pieces
320 g plain flour
5 g baking powder
160 g unsalted butter at room temperature
130 g granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
40 g golden syrup
30 g maple syrup

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade and line 2 - 3 baking sheets with baking paper.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the flour and baking powder.
3. Add the remaining ingredients and pinch together into a dough, but careful not to over-work it. It should just hold together.
4. Divide up the dough into pieces, then each piece rolls out to the length of the baking sheet and is about 2 cm in diameter.
   
5. Place two rolls per baking sheet only and bake until golden brown. The recipe said 15 minutes, but I ended up baking them for 22 minutes.
6. Take out from the oven and immediately cut into pieces at a slight angle, then carefully transfer to a cooling rack and let cool down completely, then they will go harder and chewier.
   
7. Once completely cooled, store in an airtight container and careful, they are very moreish!

I divided the dough into 6 parts of 115 g each and baked on 3 baking sheets. The first two went in as rolled and seemed to take ages to swell up. At the 15 minute mark, the edges had reached the right colour, but overall the sticks were fairly pale. Once they were golden brown, the edges were slightly overdone, so when I cut up the pieces, I trimmed the edges and gobbled them up together with Lundulph, while they were still hot. I then flattened the second and third batches, but it didn't seem to make much difference.

I think my baking sheets are about 35 cm long and I got precisely 60 nice biscuits from this bake. We also tried one completely cooled down biscuit and it was very crunchy and chewy. Initially Lundulph thought they weren't sweet enough, but actually they were, it just takes a few seconds to kick in. Thus we're going to bed happy and sugared up tonight.

Update 16th March: After a week in a box, the biscuits have gone hard and lost most of their chewiness. I also felt they weren't sweet enough. I think caster sugar next time instead of granulated and maybe increase the amount of the golden syrup too, it's really sweet.

Carrot and date cupcakes

A few weeks ago, I was treated to some really lovely muffins. I wasn't able to find out for sure what type they were, but it seemed that they had carrots, nuts and dates in them, along with some spices, so I decided to try and re-create them.

After some searching I found a recipe that seemed to have the correct ingredients. So I got the ingredients and am particularly happy to have got hold of some really lovely dates - very soft and creamy. But when I came to actually making the muffins and started converting the amounts to metric, it became obvious that this recipe would not work for me. The amount of dates needed seemed way over the top and with my recent banana muffin experience, I'm very cautious. Some of the other amounts were also suspicious.

So, I resorted to checking what Delia Smith and Mary Berry had to say on the subject. Well, Delia had two recipes, but for carrot cake, not muffins and I didn't have all the ingredients for them. The Mary Berry one seemed very intriguing and I will give it a try some day. This time, I used it as a guidance for the amounts of my recipe instead.

Ingredients
Makes 24
12 whole dates
3 - 4 large carrots
400 g self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
3 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground ginger
2 dl chopped walnuts
250 g honey
4 medium eggs
4 dl water
1.2 dl grapeseed oil

Icing
300 g unsalted butter at room temperature
500 g icing sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
100 g maple syrup
4 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp milk (if needed)
ready-made tiny sugar carrots for decoration

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C. Prepare the muffin cases - you need 24 of 5 cm diameter.
2. Cut the dates lengthwise in half and remove the stone, then set aside.
3. Peel and trim the carrots, then grate coarsely. Weigh up 300 g for the recipe.
4. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger and walnuts.
5. Add the carrots, honey, eggs, water and oil and stir together to get thoroughly mixed through. It will look like runny porridge with orange sticks in it.
6. Pour some of the batter into the cases, filling to about a third. Then place a date half in each, with the cut side up.
   
7. Distribute the remaining batter in the muffin cases, then bake until they go golden brown, about 50 minutes. Check with a toothpick for readiness.
8. Remove from the oven and let cool on a wire rack.
   
9. While the muffins are baking, place the butter, icing sugar and cinnamon in a bowl and stir together with a fork until well combined.
10. Add the maple syrup and vanilla extract and incorporate well.
11. If the mixture feels too thick for piping, add the milk and incorporate. Wrap tightly so the icing doesn't start drying and store in a cool place until it's needed.
12. Once the muffins have cooled completely, prepare a piping bag with a nozzle and transfer the icing to it, then pipe onto each muffin.
    
13. To finish, place a small sugar carrot decoration.

I have two muffin tins, taking 12 cases each, so had two batches to bake. The first one I baked for 45 minutes and they had a really nice colour on the surface when they came out. I'd tested for readiness several times and each time, the toothpick came out with small amounts of batter. I let them cool inside the muffin tin, which is fairly thick, so would extend the baking a little. They were slightly warm by the time I took them out.

The second tin, I left to bake for 60 minutes and it went a bit darker on the surface than I would have liked. But the tooth pick came out clean. However, when I cut in half one of each batch, the 45 minute one seemed moister than the 60 minute one. And this was indeed the feeling I had when I ate them. Lundulph commented that the 60 minute ones were better as the creaminess of the date became more prominent. However, once the icing was in place, the date creaminess was lost a little. Lundulph was adamant that the date should be in one piece in the middle and not chopped and stirred into the batter. These dates don't really have that strong a flavour, so chopping them up would make them disappear completely. Possibly this goes for all dates, I don't know.

On the whole, I'm very pleased with this recipe, as I feel I put it together myself to a much larger extent than before. I've also been racking my brain on variations for the future. For starters, if the muffins won't be iced, then the amount of honey should be increased, they weren't very sweet on their own. The recipes on Delia Smith's website had orange zest in them and that might complement the flavours nicely.

After baking was over, the whole house smelt very nice, but I think if I'd used butternut squash instead of carrots, the result would have been the same. Lundulph reckoned it's just there to add bulk. The carrots do add some sweetness and certainly moisture. I would have liked a bit more crunch, so will probably toast the walnuts beforehand. And use honey with stronger flavour too.

I'm particularly pleased with the icing - inspired from this recipe, I used the amounts from my cookie monster cupcakes, but added vanilla and cinnamon. Actually I made half the amount, from 150 g butter and this as barely enough for 20 cupcakes, so I've doubled the amounts in the recipe above, so that all 24 muffins can be decorated and one doesn't have to worry about running out. I should practise my piping though.