Jaffa Cupcakes

Aren't these the cutest little clementine oranges you've ever seen? They're not the real thing though. The real oranges are in the bowl in the background. These little cuties are made from marzipan! They were pretty easy and very fun to make. I decided to make these to top some cupcakes I was creating for my little brother's birthday.

He LOVES the English Jaffa Cakes which are these chocolatey-orangey (McVitie's terms) biscuits. We can find them in the U.S. now and I'm always buying him a box for his birthday or Christmas. We visited a cupcake shop together recently and he commented that nobody makes a chocolate-orange combination. So, I vowed to him that I would...and here it is! I made chocolate cupcakes with a homemade orange buttercream and topped them with my homemade marzipan crafted into tiny little clementine oranges.

Overall, they turned out quite good, but I did have a few hiccups (I mean learning experiences) along the way.

First of all, I think I filled my cupcake papers just a little too much. So, while they rose nicely and baked perfectly, they were a little too full and some of them stuck to the cupcake tin a little. They don't even look that full, but it's best to keep them only 1/2-2/3 full.

I also tried using these new cupcake papers called "If You Care." They are unbleached, which I thought was good and while I was trying to be a good environmentally conscious baker, they didn't work out so well. While they boast "better non-stick performance" that apparently not only meant they wouldn't stick to the pan, but also that the cake wouldn't stick to the paper. The cupcakes that I baked in these papers, were coming away from the paper and looked awful. I was lucky that I baked half of them in just plain white (yes, probably bleached) cupcake papers, but they turned out better (the one on the right).

Ok, so that's my venting about the cupcakes out of the way. Now onto the fun part - the little marzipan clementines.

I started with my smallest packet of frozen marzipan that I made from scratch earlier in the year. I thawed it in the refrigerator overnight and then let it come to room temperature the next day. As I did previously when I made the marzipan tulips, I reconstituted the marzipan using a little light corn syrup and it came together and was ready to mold in no time.

The first step was to make it orange, so I used an actual clementine orange as my subject and used AmeriColor Electric Orange (163) that was cut into the marzipan before I kneaded it. After having green and pink hands for a few days after coloring fondant for my birthday cake, I decided to wear some gloves to knead the orange color into the marzipan.

I was pretty happy with this nice bright orange color and molded it into a log first.

I cut the log into eight somewhat equal pieces.

Then, I cut each of the eight pieces in two and this was the size I used for rolling them into 16 little oranges.

One tip that I almost forgot about (and had to re-roll a few) was to place them on plastic wrap after molding them as it's pretty sticky.

I love this idea that I read about. To give the oranges their stem, I used whole cloves with the bloom from the middle removed.

Then they were rolled over my ceramic spice grater for the "dimpled" effect. However, I find that marzipan (especially homemade) has a little texture to it anyway from the ground almonds.

Here they are, my heaping bowl full of marzipan oranges. Now onto decorating the cupcakes...

I ended up making my own recipe for the orange buttercream. It ended up having a nice light orange flavor, but not too overpowering (see recipe below).

I piped on the frosting as I thought it would look nicer with the orange zest in it. While I definitely need to work on my piping skills (and am trying desperately to get into that course in culinary school), this was a little more difficult to pipe because it had a looser consistency with the orange juice I added in. Perhaps, I should have added a bit more powdered sugar to hold it together more, but it worked out just fine. I chilled the cupcakes overnight and it held together nicely. I just let them come to room temperature before I placed the marzipan oranges on top and served them.

While I learned a few things along the way, I was quite happy with my Jaffa cupcakes. My brother was too, but admitted that he felt I had gone through way too much trouble for him to just inhale it in less than a minute.

Recipe for Orange Buttercream:

2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter

4 cups powdered sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1-2 teaspoons fresh grated orange peel

4-6 tablespoons fresh squeezed orange juice

Beat the butter until light and fluffy. Add in the powdered sugar a little at a time and beat on low (so it doesn't fly everywhere). Beat in the vanilla and orange peel. Add the orange juice a few tablespoons at a time for taste and consistency. Note: I used a little over 6 tablespoons and it had a nice flavor, but the consistency was a little loose.

Fun with Fondant

This is my first time even working with fondant and since I'm crazy, I also decided I needed to make the fondant from scratch as well. I had been talking to my friend in pastry school about all the blogs writing about different types of flavored fondants - mostly marshmallow and white chocolate. I researched recipes for white chocolate fondant and it's basically making a melted white chocolate add-in for plain rolled fondant. Instead of just buying rolled fondant, I thought I'd try to do it all from scratch and make that too. Yes, it took longer, but it wasn't necessarily difficult.

Fondant is basically a whole lot of powdered sugar that is pulled together and made pliable with gelatin, water, corn syrup and glycerin. Doesn't sound that tasty, right? That's why I wanted to try to make the white chocolate fondant. All the recipes I looked through indicated this as being very difficult to make and it wasn't easy, but I read through lots of tips and it didn't turn out too bad for my first try. I found a Food Network page with some great tips on working with fondant that I'll definitely refer to in the future.

For the rolled fondant, I used a recipe in my James Peterson "Baking" book as all the recipes I've tried from his book turn out great and it had a really handy step-by-step photo guide.

I first added the water to the gelatin and allowed it to "bloom." Then, it was dissolved over simmering water before adding in the corn syrup and glycerin. This mixture was kneaded into the 7+ cups of powdered sugar. It seemed VERY sticky at first, but I kneaded it in with even more powdered sugar and got it to come together nicely. This was wrapped in plastic, a damp towel and more plastic to let it rest.

Now for the white chocolate....

I used a recipe that I found on Martha Stewart Weddings. It called for using cocoa butter, which I didn't have on hand, so I used a little shortening to mix in with the white chocolate instead and it worked out just fine.

White chocolate was melted down with a little shortening and then stirred in with light corn syrup. That was poured into plastic wrap to stand a room temperature overnight. I kneaded the white chocolate mixture and then kneaded it in with the plain rolled fondant using some corn starch as it was sticky. It came together so nicely though and I ended up with a smooth and silken round of delicious white chocolate fondant.

It rested all day and I was able to roll it out very easy (again with a dusting of corn starch).

Now I got the cake ready. I made a small vanilla cake with two layers. To go with the white chocolate fondant, I made a white chocolate buttercream (see below for recipe) for in between the layers and the fondant to adhere to on the outside of the cake. It was a little tricky to roll out and I had to redo it a few times as part of it was a little thin when I tried to drape it on the cake. I used more corn starch to smooth the fondant on the cake over the buttercream and trimmed the bottom edge.

While I had accomplished covering the cake with fondant, I did want to decorate it in some way. This cake is for my birthday, so I went with a few fun colors and split the leftover fondant to knead in some pink and green gel food coloring. I realized that I just have "electric" Americolor, so it turned out more bright that I had wanted, so I'll have to get some more muted colors to keep in stock as well. I just went simple and got my circle cutters out and went with dots for the cake. It was pretty easy to roll out and cut and I continued to use lots of corn starch to keep it from sticking to the counter. Throughout the decorating process, I was getting quite hungry and I sustained myself by sampling the white chocolate fondant.

I made a simple royal icing to use as the "glue" for the fondant circles to stick to the cake and stick on top of each other. It wasn't perfect, but I cut a ribbon of fondant as the bottom just didn't look finished enough.

I was so happy with the way my cake turned out and the experience of working with fondant. It is time consuming, but won't deter me from doing it again. In fact, I have some extra plain rolled fondant leftover and some extra pink and green white chocolate fondant. So, I'll have to come up with some ideas of how to use that soon.

I even had pink and green candles to put in my cake and Audrey helped me blow out the candles.

"Happy Birthday to me!" I know it's not normal to make your own birthday cake, but those who know me know that I'm a bit of a control freak and in this case I was able to create the flavor and look of my cake (even if I was made fun of for doing it). Plus, I was able to conquer making fondant.

Recipe for White Chocolate Buttercream

6 oz. white chocolate, chopped

1/4 cup whipping cream

1 cup unsalted butter, cut in pieces (cold)

1 cup powdered sugar

Microwave the white chocolate with the whipping cream in a bowl on high for about 1 1/2 minutes, stirring half way through, until almost completely melted. Stir until completely melted. Cool to room temperature.

Beat butter and sugar gradually into cooled white chocolate mixture on high speed until light and fluffy.