An Almost Grown-Up Christmas

As a child Christmas is very me, me, me but I am now 23 and, as my mother keeps telling me, this means I don't get the same amount of surprises as the little ones. Now I'm not bothered about amounts, I'm a quality over quantity kind of girl, but sadly Christmas usually means useless presents so this year I took charge and kindly requested a whole host of gifts from her. I was very clear, all I really wanted was some pyjama's, anything else would be a bonus, but I had listed a variety so that I wouldn't know what was coming. I thought this was a cunning plan and somehow, magically, even those who didn't have access to the gift gave me wonderfully thoughtful presents.

Some of my favourite presents, including a beautiful long chained gold bird necklace, a hand knitted headband 
and an Apple Magic Mouse to stop me getting RSI with my incessant trackpad use.

I loved spending time with my friends on our traditional Christmas Eve pub crawl, plus my family and my boyfriend. This is his first year out of university (he did Dentistry which is a 5 year course) and he didn't love his short 4 day break (that's very short when you're used to 2/3 weeks) but we crammed in seeing both of our families and the constant moving around felt very adult. Suddenly we weren't just sat in front of the television eating chocolate, we were in the car moving around and he was entertaining my five year old brother playing Halo on the XBox and competing over the noise of my family all talking at once. Seriously impressive if you take into account the fact my boyfriend is an only child who is not used to having lots of children around and my brother argues with everyone he plays with and even shoots those on his team.

Chocolate Fudge Cupcake Recipe

I did promise that I would put up the recipes I used for the Graduation Cakes so today I'm starting with chocolate fudge.  These are more hard work than the raspberry cupcakes but they are extremely rich in chocolate flavour and all dense and gooey.  I should warn you that I'm not the best baker, this was probably way more experimental than it needed to be with me adding extra water and syrup just because I thought it needed it.  I don't think they were quite supposed to look like they did, but they tasted good despite the fact the frosting was way too sticky and thick really to be piped...as you can see.

The recipe was taken from the old faithful Cupcakes and Muffins book and was one half of their Dark and White Fudge Cakes recipe.  The boy doesn't like white chocolate, but if you do make the frosting following the recipe below but replace the plain chocolate with white.

Chocolate Fudge Cupcakes

The following recipe is supposed to make 20 cakes, frosted half and half with white and plain chocolate fudge frosting.  Whilst the frosting recipe is therefore only for 10 cakes when I made this I only got 12 cupcakes and the frosting covered perfectly.  However, you may want to make extra and/or experiment first to see how far you get.

Ingredients:

• 200 ml/7 fl oz water
• 85 g/3 oz butter
• 1 tbsp golden syrup
• 3 tbsp milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 225 g/8 oz plain flour
• 2 tbsp cocoa

Frosting:

• 50 g/1 3/4 oz plain chocolate broken (I used a 85% cocoa fair-trade chocolate)
• 2 tbsp water
• 25 g/0.9 oz butter
• 175 g 6 oz icing sugar

1. Preheat oven to 180 C/350 F/Gas Mark 4.
2. Line two 12-hole bun tins with 20 paper cases. (As previously mentioned I only got 12 and used silicone cases.)
3. Place the water, butter syrup in a saucepan and heat gently, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved.  Bring to the boil, reduce the hear and cook gently for 5 minutes.  Leave to cool.
4. Meanwhile pour the milk and vanilla extract into a bowl.  Add the bicarbonate of of soda and stir to dissolve.
5. Sift the flour and cocoa into a separate bowl and add the syrup mixture.
6. Stir in the milk mixture and beat until smooth, then spoon the mixture into the paper cakes.
7. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes, or until well risen and firm to the touch.  (Whilst most cakes in silicone cases take less time this one did need the full 20 minutes but keep on eye on them.)
8. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
9. To make the frosting, place the plain chocolate in a small heatproof bowl, add the water and butter, set the bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water and heat until melted.  Stir until smooth.
10. Sift the icing sugar into the bowl and beat until smooth and thick.
11. Top each cupcake with frosting and leave to set.  Decorate with chocolate shavings.  (Or a giant chocolate button in my case.)