I Heart Cupcakes on Tour - Paris

This is part one of a series of three blog posts about my recent travels - the good, the bad and the downright ugly.

Paris has the pleasure of being 'the good'

I went to Paris early in March for my 40th birthday. And fell in love. Not just with the cakes but with everything. I LOVED it there. I think it could be because you can buy anything flavoured with Speculoos. 

 Whilst there the best thing I ate wasn't actually a cupcake but a Speculoos cake from ...Starbucks. I know, we went to Paris and the best thing we ate was from Starbucks...but this cake was AMAZING. So good we went twice and ate it. We'd originally just popped in to use the loo and fell in love with the cake!

We also shared some Cookies and Cream cake - Starbucks in Paris have much better baked goods than here.

We didn't make it to half the places we meant to go to eat in in Paris - mainly because we spent the two days walking round enjoying the city. Oh and buying lots of gore DVDs (Manny found the shop of his dreams just near our hotel). Oh and buying chocolate. And beer.

We did make it to Berko however - Paris's main cupcake store. We went to the branch just up the hill from Moulin Rouge, a few minutes walk from our hotel, Le Chat Noir, which I highly recommend.

We took the cupcakes back on Eurostar and unfortunately they got a little squished but we managed to salvage them so it wasn't a total cupcake disaster.

Our choices included Speculoos and the Hi Hats you can see above. We also got banofee, cookies and cream and chocolate. Although the Speculoos was rather bland and uninspiring, with some odd tasting frosting, the rest were rather good, if a little dry. I think if we'd eaten them there they'd have been much fresher. I would definitely go back to try some other flavours if I went back to Paris. I was especially taken with the fact they use little pipettes to inject coulis into the fresh fruit cakes - as I've done with alcohol into my cupcakes previously.

We also ate some macarons at Dalloyau - the Champagne one being very nice.

The same cannot be said for Eric Keyser's pink praline brioche - dry, tasteless and I really didn't like pink pralines. Thankfully I'd resisted buying a giant bag I saw earlier in the day in G. Detou.

Finally for my 40th birthday we chose not to eat anywhere fancy but instead went to Quick, the local burger chain to have Star Wars burgers - I had the Jedi burger while Manny opted for the Darth Vader one. We are totally classy non?

Oh yeah And I brought back quite a bit of Speculoos.

Oh, another finally - we didn't make it to Ladurée in Paris but we did go to Harrods yesterday and have coffee/hot chocolate and a cake - my first Religieuse - a chocolate one which was amazing. I also bought a box of six macarons in their new limited edition Hello Kitty boxes.

Too cute. 

F*%k You Monday cake

Ever have one of those days where everything is going wrong? That happened to me last Monday so I decided to bake a 'f*%k you Monday' cake.

I had a lot of Pink Lady apples in the house so decided to make my f*%k you Monday cake my entry into the October challenge from The Pink Whisk where the theme was apples.

I based the cake on one of my favourites from the new Cake Days book from the hummingbird bakery - the apple streusel cake. I have made this twice before - once with apples and once with lemon and blueberries (this was amazing!). The cake is easily adaptable, which is the reason I love it so.

For this one I added one of my favourite ingredients to the apples - Speculoos spread. The recipe below is my adapted recipe - for the original please see Cake Days.

Streusel Topping:
1 tsp cinnamon
40g cold unsalted butter, diced
70g soft light brown sugar
70g plain flour

Sponge:
60g unsalted butter at room temp
100g caster sugar
140g plan flour
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
80ml milk
3 pink lady apples
Speculoos spread (optional)

Preheat oven to 170 . Grease 8 inch tin (I line with parchment circles from Lakeland and brush with cake release).

First make the streusel. Put flour and cinnamon into a bowl. Add the butter and rub until they resemble breadcrumbs. Stir in sugar and set aside.

Now the cake - cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix again, scraping down the sides of the bowl to ensure everything is thoroughly mixed.

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt and add half to the creamed sugar and butter, followed by half the milk. Mix well on medium, scraping down the sides frequently. Repeat with the rest of the dry and wet ingredients.

Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin.

Peel, core and slice the apples into thin(ish) slices. Arrange on top of the cake batter, and if using dollop spoonfuls of Speculoos on top of the apples, before sprinkling with the streusel topping to form an even layer.

Bake in over for about 35 - 45 mins - until golden brown and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Leave to cool in tin, the scoff with a cup of tea, and some cream/ice cream if you choose and your Monday blues will disappear.

Sorry about the photos - it was a dark and dank day in my New Cross kitchen (f'ing Monday) and our light was all being blocked by scaffolding outside!

Do you Speculoos?

Why is it when you go abroad all the food just looks so much more interesting? Speculoos pasta is one of my favourite 'foreign' supermarket finds - it is a Dutch spread based on the lovely Lotus biscuits you can buy in UK supermarkets. I know it sounds weird but it is ADDICTIVE. I hearby start the campaign to get it sold here. You can email them via their, rather boring, UK site.

Just before I left my old crappy office job in March a colleague mentioned he was going to Amsterdam for a day and he kindly brought me back a jar of paste and two packets of Speculoos sprinkles aka Hagel. Yesterday I finally got round to using them and damn, why did I wait so long?

I made two kinds of cupcakes - one stuffed with Speculoos and one with it baked in.

I used my basic vanilla cupcake recipe (except I used slightly less vanilla than usual), and scooped some into the cases with my trusty ice cream scoop, then mixed two dollops (approx 2 tablespoons - give or take some spoon licking) into the leftover mixture for the baked Speculoos cupcakes.

For the plain cupcakes - once cooled I scooped the middle out of them and added a heaped teaspoon into the centre of the cakes. Again spoon licking may have been involved.

The frosting is trusty vanilla frosting base (125g unsalted butter, 250g icing sugar - milk if necessary), without vanilla, with about 2 -3 tablespoons of Speculoos mixed in to taste. And boy did it taste pipe straight into your mouth good.

The plain ones got topped with a swirl of frosting and a good sprinkle of Speculoos Hagel - little sprinkles of biscuit. The baked Speculoos ones I did a circle of frosting and filled the middle with spread before topping with sprinkles. This was my favourite one I think, but it was difficult to choose - they were both delicious. 

As I was baking these I realised the mixes go out of date next month so I am giving away an unopened box of Speculoos Hagel Mix, the biscuit sprinkles mixed with chocolate. The Dutch put these on buttered toast, but they are great cupcakes toppers, could be mixed into cake or just eaten from the box.

To win, just leave a comment below stating what item you have found on holiday that you wish you could buy in the UK.

You can get an additional chance to win by following @annecupcake on Twitter and tweet the following message: I've just entered to win #speculoossprinkles from @annecupcake and you can too. Enter here: http://i-heart-cupcakes.blogspot.com

Open to Mainland UK residents only. Contest closes at midnight Friday 29th July. PLEASE ensure you leave an email address or @twitter name so I can contact you - if you do not I will award it to someone else as I work all weekend and can't chase people up! Winner will receive the prize early August and the use by date is August 18th so only enter if you are going to use it please!

Finally you can buy Speculoos paste in the UK online but compare the prices to Hollands - 1 Euro - I must get to Holland soon. They also have crunchy spread. The lucky sods.