Strawberry Ice Cream Cupcakes

It's that time of year again when I break up for the summer holiday and celebrate my birthday. As Hubby & I have known each other for 9 years he knows exactly what I like. With the KitchenAid for my birthday last year and the trip to River Cottage for Christmas he outdid himself yet again this year with an iPhone for me. I've been talking about buying myself one for ages, but have been saving up. For my birthday I also got some beautiful flowers, lovely set of new saucepans (after the handles fell off my old ones), microplane grater, Lothian raspberry vodka from Demijohn and some other lovely foodie gifts. What you can't see in the photo above was that 3rd Birthday was the birthday I got a Fisher Price kitchen set for my birthday, a sign of things to come?

To celebrate my birthday we had a BBQ, something of which has come a bit of a tradition. Thankfully the rain held off and in amongst the various vegetables and raised beds we had a barbecued shoulder of hogget (sourced from a smallholding friend) along with some tomato focaccia, roasted new potatoes, beetroot hummus and salad.

For after the BBQ I made a peach melba jelly and also wanted a nostalgic cake. When I saw the Ice Cream Cupcakes on Mums Who Bake a few weeks back I knew they would be perfect. As a child I can remember how much I loved the marshmallow filled ice cream cones that were a treat and any trip to the seaside was incomplete without a Mr Whippy. As strawberries often featured in my childhood birthday cakes I wanted to add the pulp from the last few strawberries from the garden into the icing.



One thing about traditional cupcakes is that I'm not a big fan of buttercream as I find it too sweet, so decided to try a cream cheese frosting. Well, I have to say I'm converted to cream cheese icing. Although it doesn't last as long as buttercream and it isn't as stiff, it's not as sweet as buttercream and absolutely delicious. I could quite happily just eat the icing! I really enjoyed my making these cakes and I'm going to try and do more swirly icing on cakes now I've found an icing I like. Still need a bit more practice with the icing bag and I'm going to try and see if I can find bigger icing nozzles as the shops here have quite a limited selection.

One thing I did learn from this is don't overfill the ice cream cone or it will dramatically burst and dribble cake mix down the cone.

Strawberry Ice Cream Cupcakes
Makes 8-10

For the cakes
125g plain flour
125g vanilla sugar (or caster sugar)
125g softened butter
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1.5 tsp baking powder
8 flat bottomed ice cream cones

For the icing
240g cream cheese, cold from the fridge (it has to be the full fat version or it won't work)
80g softened butter
150g - 190g icing sugar (to taste)
the pulp of a few mashed strawberries
3 full sized flakes cut into 1/4

1) Preheat the oven to 180oc. Beat together the sugar, butter and eggs, then mix in the rest of the ingredients.

2) Line up the cones on a baking sheet. It does make it slightly easier if you put the cones in the cups of a bun pan.

3) Fill up the cones about 2/3 with cake mix. Don't overfill or they go everywhere! Bake in the oven for 15 min, or until they are golden and pass the skewer test. Allow to cool on a wire rack before icing.

4) Once the cakes have cooled beat together the butter and cream cheese then mix in the sieved icing sugar to taste. Fold in the strawberries then pipe onto the the cakes. Decorate with a flake.

5) If you want the icing to be a bit firmer, chill in the fridge for a few hours.

Here's to 2009

We manage to pack so much into the 2 week-long festive break, but at the same time it was really relaxing. Most of it was spent catching up with friends, seeing the sights and indulging in some fantastic food and drink.

First stop was Bristol to stay with some good friends and their crazy, lovable cat called Simba. First night we went to their local to try some proper cloudy Somerset Cider. It was far too strong for me but Hubby, bless his big cotton socks, enjoyed a few pints of it and it sent him totally wappy. I think I may have temporarily disowned him on the way home after I spotted him wearing a traffic cone on his head. Previous years when we have gone for New Years we've all struggled to stay awake (we're becoming lightweights!), so this year made a conscious effort to stay awake...and that we certainly did. On NYE we dined on delicious Beef Wellingtonfollowed by a delicious cheese board and sampled various Ports while watching the Sky Lanterns people had set off throughout the village to bring in the New Year.

Finally on the 2nd we headed out to Brean Down to the south of Weston-Super-Mare (as shown in picture above). After a short climb to the top, in which my legs were quite adamant they weren't going to do, the view was spectacular, if a bit windy and cold. We must have spent an hour or so at the top admiring the views. The climb certainly dusted off some cobwebs.

This evening, after a long journey north trying to avoid the chaos of the M6 we eventually returned to our very cold cottage, the thermometer in the kitchen read 7oc...brrrrr. I think we'll be having a constant fire burning for the next 24 hours to warm the cottage back through. Thank goodness for hot water bottles!

I'm not usually a resolutions fan, but for this year I would like to:
* Acquire better knife skills, ask me to finely chop something...you can forget it.
* Eat at a famous restaurant (Hubby has sorted this )
* Also keep an eye out for River Shed HQ...Hubby's self-entitled project.

So with 305 items on Google Reader and Delicious, Fresh & Jamie Magazine to catch up on I bid you a great 2009 and I hope it is a fantastic foodie year.

Mother's Day Feast & Kinder Bueno winner

Today is Mothering Sunday (or Mother's Day) in the UK. Yesterday evening my sister, brother(who took the photos) and I managed to pull off quite a feast. As our mum is jetting of to New Zealand next week for a month, rather than going out for a meal on Mothering Sunday, (which is usually a guaranteed sign for having a terrible meal, poor service and longs waits for the meal) we decided to have a go at cooking a 3 course meal. With my sister doing the starter, me the main and brother making the pud, the kitchen was quite a scene.

As we live a 2 hour drive from my parents we decided to have the meal Saturday night meaning we could all drink and have a leisurely meal. Original intentions was for it to be a Welsh themed meal as we were eating on St Davids Day, but I'm not too confident with roast lamb, and we couldn't think of a quick easy Welsh dessert. However sis did manage to get Welsh goats cheese into the starter.



Sis made Goat's Cheese and Cranberry Parcels on a bed of leaves dressed with blackberry vinaigrette. They were delicious and I'll certainly be making them at home.



For the main course Hubby and I cooked topside of longhorn beef with mustard crust from Quenby Hall, honey roasted parsnips, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puds, cauliflower cheese and purple sprouting broccoli. The smell of the beef cooking filled the house and mum commented on how good the beef was. It tasted like beef should taste. It was rarer than the photo shows. This was the first time I've cooked roast for 7 people and I must say myself we didn't do too badly! Sis made the gravy as I just can't make it.



For pudding my brother made strawberry gratin. We found the recipe in Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook. It was really easy to make and delicious. It tasted a bit like cheesecake with a creme brulee sugar topping.



I was a really enjoyable evening and it was all washed down with various liquor coffees and Hotel Chocolat truffles. It was far better (and cheaper) than any meal we could have had if we had gone out for Mother's Day lunch.

Congratulations to Barbara Ghezzi from Suffolk who won a years supply of Kinder Bueno. The prize should be with you by the end of the week.

Bonfire Night

We're back from our Bonfire party weekend in Warwickshire, that involved copious amounts of mulled wine and fireworks. In the UK 5th November is Guy Fawkes Night (also known as Bonfire Night) where we celebrate the fact that Guy Fawkes failed to blow up the House of Parliament. We didn't have the traditional bonfire, but did set alight a "Guy". Traditionally there is many foods surrounding Guy Fawkes Night including toffee apples, cinder toffee, bonfire toffee, jacket spuds, soup and mulled wine. The apples and cheesecake we made went down very well.

In the West Midlands it is traditional to have Faggots with mushy peas on Bonfire Night. I have to admit I've always been a bit nervous about trying faggots due to the cuts of meat they contain (pork - offal, heart, liver) but it didn't taste like I was expecting. To me they tasted of strong sausagemeat, not sure I would eat them again though!