introducing the 'reuben special' and some devil's food cupcakes too!

the sunday club got together again and so i was busy in the kitchen....this time i had a special request to work with....reuben had seen a recipe in nigella's cookbook for peanut butter and snickers muffins and he really wanted some. so i decided to do a bit of editing as muffin batter is different to cupcakes. changed the batter, and chopped the snickers and added them in...the result...well see for yourself the photos of the 'naked' reuben and the iced one! the taste was really good...very peanut-y and the snickers had melted to form this lovely gooey chewy-ness in the middle. i made chocolate buttercream for the icing and it was soooooo good i could have just sat down on the floor and devoured the whole bowl without even putting it on the damn things! i made some 'devil's food' cupcakes to go along because not everyone digs peanuts and well, you can't go wrong with chocolate.... iced those guys with cream cheese frosting and the combo was pretty divine as the texture of the cake is truly soft and spongey....that should satisfy the sugar cravings for a few days....or few minutes as the case may be!

gourmet cupcakes - black forest and lemon meringue

so we had another get together of the 'sunday club' and i offered to do dessert...i wanted something a bit more gourmet and adult-like for the evening so i searched around and decided on black forest and lemon meringue cupcakes. i recently bought a crappy electric mixer (at sheng siong...i was desperate!) but it has been so helpful in preparing batters that i think without it i would have had blisters on my fingers! i'm secretly dreaming of owning a 'kitchen aid' they are truly an amazing mixer...but with a price tag to match so...ho hum, i might actually have to start selling cupcakes before i can get one of those! both batters were pretty easy to make. the lemon meringue involved a lot more post-baking work as you had to cut out the middle of the cupcake and fill it with lemon cream and then replace, top with the merinue and re-bake...but i love it...am finding the whole thing highly therapeutic! overall i was really happy with the taste of both. for the black forest cupcake, i used the recipe from an absolute fav blog of mine http://cupcakeblog.com/ and it was truly divine. i added black cherries to the batter and they just blended in so well. at first i wanted to top with fresh cream but living in Singapore has it's cons in that everything just melts...you whip cream and a few seconds later it's turned into liquid again...pointless! anyway they went down really well at the get-together and there were leftovers so i brought some back and took them to work today...very well received as well. i aim to please...what else can i say?