Hi. My name is Cath, and I am a cupcake-a-holic.
As you may have gathered, I love to cook, and especially bake. I do love all kinds of baking, but at the end of the day, as much as I love macarons, cakes, biscuits and brownies, my true love is cupcakes. They are cute little packages of delight, sure to bring a smile to anyone’s dial. For years and years and years and years they have been my go to treat and a few of the many varieties I have made are lemon and lime, red velvet (it started the whole red velvet craze in my world), chocolate, lemon meringue and the trusty old vanilla. I love cupcakes that much that I have cupcakes on my dressing gown, apron, two bags, a tea towel and a cupcake shaped plate. I am also going to be getting a vinyl sticker for a wall in my kitchen that reads “love and cupcakes are all you need” after seeing a print that Sally from Sally’s Baking Addiction received. So yes, a little obsessed over here.
So for my first foray back into the cupcake world after a long hiatus, I asked my friend C what her favourite chocolate bar was to inspire a cupcake for her birthday. Originally I was going to call these Turkish Delight cupcakes (as that was the answer to my question), and I guess I sort of can because the flavour is essentially there. But when you search for Turkish Delight cupcakes on the interweb, there usually is Turkish Delight in/on them. So I am going to go with the much longer name of Chocolate Cupcakes with Rose Buttercream. Phew!
Pavlova can be a very temperamental dessert and with my past experience I was hesitant when Miss B asked me to make it on her visit, especially as I have my mother-in-law’s Pavlova to live up to. I have attempted the Pav a couple of times past, once in our last house where you could not see the temperature on the oven dial and had to rely on the dodgy oven thermometer (so I should have known then and there it wouldn’t work) as well as once in the new house. They both ended up being over cooked, the first one was inedible and the second was able to be saved so we had more of an Eton Mess for dessert that night.