Ghirardelli Chocolate Company Contest!

By on Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

This is it.  Your chance to enter Ghirardelli fame and Facebook feature.

Recipe for your success:

1 – “Like” the Ghirardelli page on Facebook.

2 – Fill in your basic information, upload your recipe, and upload your mouth-watering photograph.

3 – Win!

Perhaps we could do a group ATC entry?

I’d like to know of anyone’s opinion on baking with Ghirardelli and whether you find the chocolate richer, softer, and needing more cocoa powder to balance for spreading and shaping?  What about the Ghirardelli Intense Dark?  And the Ghirardelli white that I nibbled at while baking with it last week – do you do that too?  Are we shorting our batches or should we just write them as 10 oz broken into small bits with remaining 2 oz for the cook!

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Fantasy Cupcakes: Owner’s Tips

By on Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

I recently discovered Fantasy Cupcakes on line, a lovely UK bakery that won a gold heart prize in the North West Fine Foods Awards, beating out 400 entries in the general foods competition.

Vegan Mudpie Cupcake

So I e-mailed Fantasy Cupcakes to ask for their secrets at taking a vegan cupcake into the mainstream.  The owner, Melinda, thought that the bitterness of the chocolate was the primary flavor of the cake and that it lingered on the palate.

Here’s a list of Melinda’s tips for vegan mud pie cupcakes:

  • Use a little apple cider vinegar in the sponge batter instead of soya milk curdled with vinegar;
  • Mix the wet ingredients together and fold in the dry ones; and,
  • For the frosting, melt rich, dark chocolate mixed with soya cream, leave it to set, beat in a little powdered sugar until a firm(ish) spreading consistency is reached, spread onto the cupcake in a dome shape with a small palate knife, and dust with a good quality cocoa.

Melinda said the frosting recipe was an adaptation from a recipe for a vegan chocolate torte which was a family favorite for years.

For my two pence, I’d recommend using Cadbury’s cocoa powder.  It’s make in the UK and has more bite to it than its US Hershey counterpart.

Filed under: Cupcake Help!, Cupcake Ideas, Recipes, Vegan | No Comments »