Baby Shower Bash

A colleague of mine is having a baby sometime around the 15th of this month (well, his wife is having the baby) and so we decided to throw him a baby shower on Tuesday to celebrate. It was my job to bring the sweets so I made two different types of cake. The first is a peach upside down cake from taste.com.au. I made this to get rid of some peaches I had picked up the other day that I hadn't eaten in time and everyone absolutely raved about how wonderful this cake was. I also thought it was very good. The link above is to the recipe and I followed it exactly, so I won't republish here. I did want to make them individual, but having never tried this recipe before, I didn't want it to be spoiled and inedible for my coworkers, so I just stuck to the recipe as it was, however if were to try again, I think I would give the individual ones a go.



I will say that I used a candy thermometer to measure the sugar, as I can never tell by eye whether or not it is at caramel stage or hard crack stage etc. This is the most accurate way I know of to do that, so make sure that your sugar is really caramelized properly in the first step, or I don't think it will work so well. This is about 338F or 170C. Do make sure you watch it carefully though, because the time from caramel to burned is only a couple of seconds. I learned this the hard way as I turned my back on the first batch I made for just a few seconds and it burned. Its not easy getting super heated sugar out of your pan and clean up is a bitch, so try not to do this if you can avoid it!!




The second dessert I made were s'mores cupcakes. I made a hybrid of a bunch of different recipes I had seen for these to come up with this recipe and I think it turned out really well. Hubby thought they were great, as did everyone at my work. There was none left, so that has to say something.

The only thing I will say about these is that I decided to make s'mores cupcakes so I could use my new kitchen torch (a super cool and super nice gift from my parents), however I quickly learned that butter and flame don't mix very well. I didn't think about this at first as the majority of the icing is made from marshmallow. I thought I could "roast" it under the kitchen torch, but the small amount of butter in there was not having a bar of that. So, the marshmallow topping went un-roasted....kind of a bummer...so if you wish to roast yours if you make these, then omit the icing and just stick a real marshmallow on top and roast away!! These still turned out great and the icing was yummy, so whatever floats your boat, it will be great either way.



S'mores Cupcakes
(makes 24)

graham cracker base
2 cups graham cracker crumbs from actual crackers, not the box ones (I used teddy's)
1 stick of butter melted
chocolate cake
any chocolate cake recipe you like (I used betty crocker for this one due to lack of time)
marshmallow icing
1 stick butter, room temperature
1 cup confectioners sugar (icing sugar)
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/2 tub if marshmallow fluff
teddy grahams for decoration
graham cracker crumbs for decoration (can be from box)

1. Place the crumbs and melted butter for the base in a bowl and mix. Spoon a small spoonful of the base into the baseo f greased cupcake patties and press down with the back of the spoon.

2. Prepare your cake mix and divide evenly among the cupcake patties (about 2/3 full each).

3. bake for directed amount of time in the chocolate cake recipe, then remove from the oven to cool. Peel away the patty liner.

4. Cream the butter for the icing until fluffy. Add confectioners sugar a 1/4 cup at a time and beat until fluffy each time. Beat in the vanilla until incorporated, then dump in the marshmallow fluff and beat until creamy and mixed in. Transfer to a pastry bag (if desired) and pipe onto cupcakes. Top with teddy grahams and a sprinkle of graham crumbs.