Apple and cinnamon cupcakes

2 tsp cinnamon

4 tsp vegetable oil

4 tsp baking powder

250g caster sugar

320g plain flour

50g unsalted butter, melted

2 lightly beaten eggs

175ml buttermilk

2 peeled finely diced apples

Turn the oven to 175 degrees (350F). Line a cupcake tin with paper liners (this recipe makes 12 decent sized cupcakes)

In a bowl combine the sifted dry ingredients.

In a large bowl beat the liquid ingredients until well combined. Add the dry ingredients and beat until nearly combined. Stir in the apples - careful not to overmix!

Bake for 20 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes, and then remove from the tin and cool on a wire rack. Top with brown sugar frosting. These keep for up to 2 days or freeze (without icing for up to 3 months).

Miniature chocolate chip cupcakes

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups sifted self-raising flour 

3/4 cup caster sugar

1/2 cup cocoa powder, sifted 

3/4 cup dark or milk choc bits 

1 tablespoon cocoa powder, extra, to serve 3/4 cup milk

125g butter, melted, cooled

2 lightly beaten eggs

Instructions 

Preheat oven to 200°C.

Prepare an oven tray with tiny paper lined foil cups.

Combine flour and caster sugar in a bowl. Stir in cocoa powder and choc bits. Make a well in the centre. Add milk, butter and eggs to flour mixture. Using a metal spoon, stir gently to combine.

Spoon mixture into the paper cups, till 3/4 full. 

Bake for 5 to 10 minutes until risen and set. Cool.

Coconut Mango Cake

This cake is both delicious and pretty. The mango gives it the most glorious gold colour and the taste combination of coconut and mango is sensational. You can use either fresh mango puree, or tinned at a pinch. Ingredients 

330g caster sugar 

250g butter 

4 eggs 

160ml mango puree 

2 cups desiccated coconut 

375g self raising flour 

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees. 

Grease and line a cake tin (baker's grease will work really well too... hmmm must post the recipe for that!). 

Beat the sugar and butter in a mixing bowl until combined (not light and fluffy, just combined) then add the eggs one at a time - don't beat strongly, just to combine. 

Grab a wooden spoon and stir in the coconut and mango puree and then the flour. Spread into your prepared cake tin - the mixture is quite thick. 

Bake for about 1 and a half hours. Stand for a few minutes in the tin before turning out on to a wire rack; flip so it is top side up to cool. 

Icing: 1 and a half cups of icing sugar 1 egg white 2 tablespoons mango puree 3/4 cup desiccated coconut Beat the egg white till foamy... gradually beat in the icing sugar a tablespoon at a time. Stir in the puree and coconut, and then spread onto the cake.

Yoghurt Cake

This recipe is from a non-food blog: french word of the day. I subscribed to Kristin Espinasse's list a few years ago when I moved to Geneva. Back in 2007 she posted up a recipe for a yoghurt cake which sounded really fun to make, but somehow I never got around to making it. Not sure why, guess because whenever I had yoghurt in the house, I ate it instead of baking with it! After I had an operation two years ago, I have become oddly sensitive to yoghurt, to the point where I really can't eat it any more. Some friends of mine were emptying their fridge before they departed for a long trip and gave me some yoghurt. Rather than throw it out I thought to myself "ahah! I can finally make that recipe!". Here's hoping that I can eat cooked yoghurt. The funky thing about this recipe is its beautiful simplicity.

Ingredients: 

one small container of plain yoghurt (reserve the container for measuring the remaining ingredients)

flour

sugar

vegetable oil

two eggs 

2 teaspoons baking powder 

Instructions 

Fill/empty the yoghurt container... ...3 times with flour ...2 times with sugar ...1 time with vegetable oil.

First combine yoghurt, beaten eggs & sugar. Next, add flour and baking soda, stir. Add a pinch of salt... Pour in oil and mix well. 

Pour into a greased cake pan and bake for 45 minutes at 150°C (300°F). How easy is that?

Marmalade Cupcakes

There is a bit of a tale to this recipe. A friend of mine broke her leg. Her mum, being the caring sharing type, decided she couldn't stay in Australia with her daughter suffering a broken leg in Switzerland, so she flew across.

And what does a worrying mum do with herself during the day when her daughter is stuck on the couch? She makes marmalade of course! So how does this connect to me and marmalade cupcakes? Well my friend moved back to Australia and kindly donated to me the unused contents of her cupboards - including a lovely jar of marmalade.

Inspired to bake one day, I created these delicious cupcakes; only wish my friend was here to try one.

• 125 butter
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 2 cups of flour
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup milk
  
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup orange marmalade

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. If, unlike me, you have a muffin tin, put the paper cases into it, otherwise, just lay them out on a tray.

In your mixer, beat the butter and caster sugar until light fluffy. One by one, add the eggs, beating well between additions. While the mixer is still going, add the marmalade.

In another bowl, combine the flour, bicarb, salt and baking powder.

Now, alternating between the milk and the flour mixture, add to the mixer, until combined (but don't overbeat).

Fill the paper cups with the mixture and then bake for around 20 minutes until risen and golden.

The special joy of these cupcakes is that the marmalade makes little pockets of marmalade toffee, which are just delicious. I topped them with a simple icing made of marmalade, icing sugar and cream cheese but actually I loved them just as they were. I took them to work and they were inhaled with gusto.

This recipe made about 2 dozen cupcakes

Vegan Coconut Cake

Two of my colleagues are leaving Geneva for the flatter climes of Australia. One of them is, like me, a foodie, so I just had to cook something for their farewell morning tea.

First up... a vegan cake. My friend James is a vegan and every time we have a morning or afternoon tea he is left holding his cup of coffee unable to eat any of the goodies. So I decided that this time around he would not be left cakeless. I wanted to make something that wasn't "typical" vegan food, all wholemeal flours soy and treacle, but something light, fluffy, properly cake-like. So I baked this very yummy coconut cake, only to get to work to discover that James is off this week on holidays. How frustrating! Still, my other colleagues wolfed it down so it was still a success story.

Coconut Cake

3 cups of self raising flour
2 cups caster sugar
1 c dessicated coconut
3/4 tsp salt
2 cups coconut milk
2/3rds of a cup of vegetable oil (something without a strong flavour)
1 tsp vanilla
2 tspns vinegar

Start by putting your oven on to heat up to 180 degrees. Grease and sprinkle a ring tin with flour (I in fact use baker's grease - recipe to come).

In a your mixer combine the flour, dessicated coconut, sugar and salt. Stir in the coconut milk and oil and mix until you get a smooth batter. Just before pouring into the cake tin, stir in the vinegar - this step seems to be the key to getting a lovely light cake with a soft texture and golden crust.

Bake around 1 hour 15 until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes away clean. Don't open the oven to test it until it has been in at least 25 minutes or it will sink! Cool briefly in the pan then turn onto a cooling rack. This cake is beautifully moist and needs no icing.

Random fruit loaf

One of my ways to deal with stress is to bake. I get these urges and I just can't resist the temptation to make biscuits, or bread or whatever I can create from the contents of my pantry. Well, I have been having a rather full-on week this week, so when I got home from work last night it was time to raid the shelves and invent!

I had a big box of mixed dried fruit and chocolate bits that I had put together for a road trip but which had not been finished, so that was to be ingredient number one. I still have too many eggs, so that's ingredient number two. The final dish... obviously, fruit loaf!

There are of course, different types of fruit loaf - you can make a form of bread with yeast, or a light cake batter, or a heavy dense loaf (eg date and walnut loaf). While there was definite appeal to the idea of taking out some of my frustrations on a yeast dough, I decided to go the faster lighter option. The result of my experiment was a light moist cake with continuous taste surprises as you encounter cranberries, apricots, sultanas (aka raisins), currants, slivers of coconut and morsels of chocolate.

Don't you love the jewel-colours in this freshly sliced cake?

Random fruit and nut loaf - original recipe by Kiriel

• 175g butter
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 tsp of vanilla paste
• 2 cups plain flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 and 1/2 cups dried fruit & nuts* (You can use any proportion of dried fruits or nuts that you like)
  

Preheat your oven to 175 degrees C.

Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the eggs one at a time, beating until smooth. Stir in the milk and vanilla.

In large bowl combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Stir in all the fruit and nuts. Make a large well in the flour, and pour in the liquid. Fold together gently (rather like muffins, this mix is not to be perfectly combines) and pour into a greased medium sized inch loaf tin (8 cups in volume).

Bake for an hour and a half (check with a skewer at an hour 15). Allow to stand in the tin until the tin is cool enough to be handled, then tip out of the pan. Allow to cool and wrap in a tea-towel to keep fresh. Because the amount of fruit in the recipe, I advise leaving the pieces in place as you slice, so that the previous slice of cake supports the next.

Fresh out of the oven - I wish I could do scratch and sniff photos, as this smells fantastic!