"Must-Have" tools for every baker

I often get asked what I deem to be the essential items for every baker, whether you are a novice or an expert. 

One of my first purchases when I set up Crumbs Couture was a rubber-grip ice-cream scoop by OXO. I am a huge fan of these as they are a joy to use, ensuring that you have consistency and neatness when you are scooping your batter into your cupcake cases. The trigger scoop allows you to eject your batter with ease, and the rubber handle means that you will always have a great grip on your scoop. This is particularly important if you are scooping out a batch that may be very large, as a slippery scoop can get painful after a while!

http://www.oxouk.com/p-230-trigger-scoop.aspx


OXO's measuring spoons are also rather nifty. The bright colours on them mean that you can easily pick out the one that you need, and these are fab for measuring baking powder/cocoa powder. They can easily be removed from the ring, so if there is one that you need to use, you can unclip it, meaning that you need not have the others hanging below it.

http://www.oxouk.com/p-512-6-piece-measuring-spoon-set.aspx

Another (newer) product that I am enamoured with is their hand held mixer. I use this for beating eggs prior to adding them to my large mixer, and the rubber grip really does make all of the difference here. If your hands are still damp once you have washed them after handling eggs, this does not hinder you if you are using this fab tool. 

http://www.oxouk.com/p-1121-hand-held-mixer.aspx


Thank you OXO!

Harpreet

Recipe: Chai Cupcakes

Hello Cake Fans!

Here is recipe number two of the Crumbs Couture Cake Class! 

Chai, which means Indian tea, has been an institution in Indian families for generations. The traditional way of making spiced chai involves a lengthy brewing process, meaning it can take approx 20 minutes to make tea the traditional way. Sadly this means that it has become more of a "treat" for most people these days! Chai contains some fantastic spices, including Ginger, Cardamom and Cinammon.

Recipe: 

In a saucepan, boil 100ml of milk. Add 2 strong teabags (Assam or Ceylon), with 5 crushed cardamom pods, a teaspoon of cinnamon, a teaspoon of ground nutmeg, a teaspoon of ground ginger powder (or a 1cm cube of fresh ginger). Allow this to simmer for 20 mins, letting the spices infuse. After 20 minutes, remove the tea-bags and strain the milk, leaving it to cool to room temperature. Alternatively you can simply combine milk with 2 chai teabags, which are teabags which you can buy which already contain the required spices. 

In a mixer combine 250g of butter with 250g of caster sugar. Once this is fluffy, add 4 eggs in total, one by one. At this point add HALF of the spicy milk to your mixture, and blend well. Add 250g of self raising flour, and once this has all mixed well, spoon into cupcake cases and bake at 180 degrees c for 18 minutes. Once they are firm but springy to the touch, remove from the oven and allow to cool. 

In a bowl combine 250g of butter with 500g of icing sugar and once this has mixed well and become fluffy, add the remaining half of the spicy milk. blend for 3 minutes and then either spoon on to the cooled sponges or pipe on with a nozzle and piping bag. Finish off with a sprinkle of cinnamon powder. 

Fluffy Buttercream Icing

Hello Cake-Lovers, 

I hope you are all well and have had a fantastic Mother's Day.

This is the first of a series of posts I am going to write containing recipes/baking tips for our online followers. Media such as Twitter and Facebook have been so valuable to us in the last year, and these recipes are a little way of us helping all of those baking enthusiasts out there who follow us!

Buttercream is made by mixing one part butter with 2 parts icing sugar. We often get compliments on our buttercream, with people remarking that it is a lot lighter and fluffier than other buttercreams that they have tried. I have always been careful to ensure that our cupcakes were light, not too sweet and did not have that heavy migraine-inducing quality that some rich cakes can have. Therefore we have always used a buttercream recipe that keeps our cake topping light. The only exception to this is chocolate, where we ask clients if they would like a richer or lighter buttercream as some like a more indulgent chocolate flavour.

So what is the secret to light and fluffy buttercream? To start, make sure your butter is at room temperature. The mistake that people make is to stop mixing the buttercream when, or soon after, the icing sugar has been incorporated into the butter. NO! Keep going! In fact the buttercream should be mixed for about 10 minutes before you can begin to spread or pipe it on to your cupcakes/cake. This will make it increase in volume. Therefore a given swirl of buttercream will have be lighter, more airy, contain less butter and sugar and generally be more "whipped". Adding milk to your buttercream before blasting it in the mixer also gives it a much lighter, softer texture so be sure to add some milk to your mixture.

I hope that this recipe has been useful. If there is another recipe you would like me to blog, please let me know!

Happy baking,

The Cupcaker x

"Crumbs! Couture" and The Cake & Bake Show

Hello Cake Fans, 

I am chuffed to tell you that Crumbs has been asked to team up with the Cake and Bake Show, which takes place in September this year at Earls Court!  http://thecakeandbakeshow.co.uk/

I will be attending as a star speaker (click here for details). During the show I will be demonstrating various cupcake baking recipes as well as decoration techniques.

I am really excited about this event as it is the first live event that is dedicated to baking and cake decoration. There has been a massive surge in the popularity of "caking and baking" as a hobby, thanks to shows such as The Great British Bake Off. This event is the perfect opportunity for all you budding bakers to come and meet your favourite professionals face-to-face!!

It should be a fantastic event for all of the family to enjoy. I can't wait!

Spreading love and Sprinkles,

Harpreet

Valentine's Cupcake Demo @ Kooks Unlimited

Hello Cake-lovers!

If you haven't already heard, Crumbs Couture are doing an evening of Cupcake demonstrations at the wonderful Kooks Unlimited in Richmond on the 1st Feb 2012. I will be showing the attendees how to make the perfect cupcake and also how to decorate your cupcakes in a variety of ways.

The flyer for the event can be seen here:

Please get in touch with the lovely folk at Kooks in order to book your place!

See you there,

The Cupcaker x

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Cupcake Demonstrations at Kooks Unlimited in Richmond

Hi Cupcake Fans!

As many of you will know, the Cupcaker has recently become a resident of the wonderful area of Kew Gardens. In my exploration of the local area, I stumbled across the phenomenal Kooks Unlimited, who have a Cookery Equipment store as well as a Bakeware Studio on Eton Street in Central Richmond.

The Bakeware Studio sells absolutely everything a keen baker may need for baking or decorating cakes, cookies, cakepops... You name it, they sell it! The store has a beautiful baking bar at the rear of the shop floor, and we are delighted to say that The Cupcaker has been invited in to do a series of cupcake demonstrations for the public. The first one will be a "How to Make Valentines Cupcakes" demo and will be taking place at 7pm on the 1st of February 2012. For details and to book your place, please call Kooks Unlimited on 020 8332 3030.

In order to welcome Kooks Unlimited to Twitter, as well as spread the word about our upcoming demonstrations, we are launching a small giveaway! We will be giving away a Valentines Hamper, containing 8 cupcakes as well as £10 worth of cupcake decorating goodies from Kooks Unlimited. In order to enter, please follow both companies on Twitter and RT our tweet.

Good Luck and see you soon at one of our demos!

The Cupcaker x

Ask The Cupcaker!

Hello Cupcake Fans,

Every day we get a bunch of e-mails from wonderful baking enthusiasts who have questions for The Cupcaker, ranging from advice needed about buttercream colour to advice on starting a cupcake business.

I have decided to do a "Question and answer" session on Twitter, enabling people to ask me any questions that they may have. These questions can be tweeted at any time, please remember to use the "hashtag" #askthecupcaker. Once a bunch of questions have come in, I will let everyone know when the answers will be tweeted! I will re-tweet the questions before each answer, making it easy for everyone to follow.

I really hope that I can answer all of your questions, and in the event that I can't I will definitely choose one of my fellow Twitter Cakey Experts to help!

Happy Baking and Tweeting,

The Cupcaker x