Chocolate orange cupcakes!

If there's one thing I can garuntee I will receive at Christmas its a Terry's chocolate orange. Don't get me wrong, I love them but with all the other goodies that are around on Christmas, my poor old chocolate oranges seem to get left till last. 

This year I got 2 oranges, one was demolished pretty much in one go (oops!) and the other I decided to make into chocolate orange cupcakes! This one was dark chocolate and I do like dark chocolate but I can't eat a lot of it and especially not on its own. But let me tell you, it tastes gorgeous in a cupcake!

To make these scrummy cupcakes you will need: 

2 eggs 

200g caster sugar

130g plain flower 

50g Cocoa powder 

2 teaspoons baking powder

160ml Milk

Vanilla extract

160g unsalted butter 

1 chocate orange (minus a couple of segments, which you'll probably end up eating) 

Preheat your oven to 170oc before you start and line a cupcake tray with paper cases ready for the batter! 

Mix the eggs and sugar together until well combined in a large mixing bowl.

In a separate bowl, mix together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and a pinch of salt. 

Using another bowl also combine the milk and 1/4 tea spoon of vanilla extract. 

Gradually beat these two mixtures into the egg and sugar mixture. Keep stirring until all the ingredients are well incorporated. It may seem like there's way to much milk at first but keep going! 

Now you need to melt the butter. Melt it on a low heat and stir continuously to avoid burning. If you chop the butter up into smaller chunks, it will melt a bit quicker. I just chucked a whole chunk in mine though! 

Stir the melted butter into your cake mixture. Don't worry if it seems like the butter will never mix, keep going and you'll get there!

Now roughly chop up the chocolate orange and add to the mixture. Stir until the chocolate is evenly dispersed. 

Now spoon the batter into the cupcake cases, only fill the cares about 2/3 full so they will have room to rise. 

Put into the oven for about 30 minutes and relax! These smell absolutely gorgeous when baking! 

To check the cupcakes are done insert a skewer or blunt butter knife into a cake, the skewer/knife should come out clean. If there is mixture left then just pop them back in for a couple more minutes.

And voilà you have some yummy cupcakes! You can expect to make about 12, possibly a couple more. The original recipie I used was for muffins so the mixture goes a little further when you use cupcake cases rather than muffin cases. 

Enjoy! 

Xxx

Making lunch!

Today me and the boyfriend made some cheesy rolls, this was quite and achievement after many failed attempts at baking! It's a really simple recipie and you really don't need many ingredients, we already had most of it in the cupboards. All you need is:

Cheese

Self raising flour (200g)

Milk (100ml) - I also found that water works just as good 

Paprika (1tsp)

Butter (50g)

That's it! We also chopped up some onion and added that in with the cheese, it tastes awesome by the way! 

So to make them:

Pre heat oven to 200 degrees

1. Add flour and butter into a bowl and mix together using your hands, then mix in the paprika. We also added in a bit of salt the second time around, it makes a difference so I recommend doing that as well 

2. Add in the milk, or in my case water and mix again. You might need to add a little more but don't make it to wet! 

3. Sprinkle some flour on the surface so the dough doesn't stick, then roll out the dough, it needs to be half a centimetre thick. Mine was a little thinner and I think that worked out a little better! 

4. Once rolled out sprinkle some cheese (don't be shy!) over the top of the dough. Also add in anything else such as onion.

5. Now you need to roll the dough into a sausage shape and cut into peices, they can be as thick or thin as you want, I prefer thinner though!

6. Cook for around 20 minutes, or until golden brown!

And then you're done, the rolls in the picture below were made using half the ingredients so you can make double using this recipie! You can also experiment with different types of cheese and fillings, we're going to do cheese and bacon next! 

xxx