I buy a LOT of cupcake books, but my favourite recent purchase is Making Cupcakes with Lola by the girls behind Lola's Cupcakes.
I got the book about two weeks ago and baked these the next day - I HAD to bake something from it as it all looked so good.
The book itself is really pretty, with a photo for each cupcake - something not all books have. The recipes are all pretty easy to follow and don't require lots of unusual ingredients - they include lots of Lola's favourites that you may have had from their stores including some boozy cocktail inspired cupcakes.
I couldn't resist the Hi Hat Marshmallow, co-incidentally Lola's flavour of the month in store now. Last months apple pie cupcake was one of the nicest cupcakes I've had recently - the candied pecan on top was delicious.
For those of you who don't know a Hi Hat is basically a cupcake with some kind of topping which is then dipped into chocolate (or butterscotch or a similar topping). The Lola's recipe is a chocolate cake topped with Marshmallow then dipped into chocolate.
The cake itself was a doddle to make and resulted in a nice moist, very chocolaty base.
The marshmallow was a bit of a faff to make but really rather easy. I think there should've perhaps been a bit more though as we had to be a little mean when piping the marshmallow out, or maybe I just like a LOT of topping? Also it is very sticky - I was covered in the stuff.
I waited for Manny to come home from work so we could have a go at dipping them together. It was a lot of fun and the only disaster was some where I had dyed the marshmallow blue as a pre-Halloween experiment - they just kept falling off so we drizzled some chocolate on top and they looked kinda gruesome, especially in my Martha Poison cupcake wrappers.
The 'normal' Hi Hats were a success - I'm not particularly fond of chocolate cake but this one was really good, and I loved the chocolate covered marshmallow.
The book is full of stuff I want to bake, and shall be doing so in the next few weeks. They are having a launch tomorrow at Selfridges with free cakes, champagne and book signings - further details can be found on their Facebook page. I'm sure any fan of cupcakes would love to find a copy in their Christmas Stocking.
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