OT - The Christmas Bakeoff

GO FOR IT GIRL! Get recipe out here for the rest of us...

Kate in MI

Hahahahahah! I was imagining you licking the spoon with your leg going up and down like crazy! I have a couple of her cookbooks. And yes, I would love the recipe!

Cindy

Me me me!!! :-)

Jan

sounds divine, why'd ya even ask. silly sharon, course we all want it. its food right, lol. cheers, jeanne

I don't think I can stand this. Sharon with the happy spot and her head in a batter bowl? Mercy. What a picture. Yes, yes. Give us the recipe and thanks for the warning. I can't wait to try this one. Polly

What a silly question.

Do you enjoy teasing us Sharon ?

Dee in Oz

They sound just too delicious not to have the recipe - I'd love to have it - I'm always making muffins for my husband - he's a muffin maniac. Thanks.

Sharon (N.B.) ...............................................................

Now, before I give you the recipe let me answer a few posts!

Yes the picture of me licking the spoon was a treat - and no, there is no photographic proof! I just adore Nigella and love her way of cooking - a squidge of this and a splodge of that. Just perfect for me. And to the fat Nazi, no I'm not supposed to be eating it which was why I baked it today so that I could give most of it away!!! And believe me it was a hit. Biggest compliment received was that I could be selling them for $3 each in a trendy cafe!! And yes, I love teasing all y'all. Now here's the recipe.......

Christmas Cupcakes

150g plain flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda 1 teaspoon mixed spice** ( I used nutmeg and cinnamon - a good whoosh of each because no mixed) pinch of salt 100g soft butter 160g brown sugar 2 large eggs 3 tablespoons sour cream 125ml boiling water 75g chocolate 1 teaspoon instant coffee

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6

1. In a bowl, mix the flour baking powder, bicarb, mixed spice (other spices), and salt. In another bowl cream the butter and sugar and add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition, and then beat in a third of the flour mix followed by a tablespoon of the sour cream, repeating til all used up.
2. Put the water, chocky and coffee powder in a pan and heat gently just until the choclate is melted. Fold this into the cake batter, but don't overbeat. The mix looks pretty runny but don't worry just ladle into muffin cases in a tin and put in the oven for about 20 minutes until each is cooked through but still dense and damp. A skewer comes out clean. Let cool in the tin for around five minutes more or less then clip out and cool on a wire rack.
3. To ice, make up some royal icing (1 cup icing sugar or mixture to a tablespoon or so of water and mix until stiff but spreadable). Spread over the top of the cupcakes and top with a cut down candy cane.

Now the thing I found. Nigella swears this recipe makes 12. let me say they were bloody big ones! You could easily eke this recipe out to make 18 decent sized ones or even 24 large small ones (does that make sense?). Either way licking the spoon will find your Spot, believe me.

And they were the hit of the family get together - not a cupcake to be seen!

When the Yorkie woke up this morning and I was doing his 'wake up rub' (it takes a lot of loving to get a Yorkie going in the morning, I wondered how your tickle spot was doing and looking forward to the recipe. I think I can do just fine with it except for the chocolate. Some of us need more Adult Supervision than others. What manner of chocolate, Sharon? Powder? Unsweet, semi-sweet, milk chocolate, chips? And I was grateful to see that Australian chickens don't lay their eggs in metric. That would have posed a problem. Polly

here you go Polly: the recipe in ounces - I'm sure you can work it out from that ;-)

I expect the chocolate is good quality cooking chocolate - the bar kind

scroll down.... it's the amounts in brackets ;-)

Ahhh this shows how dumb our measuring system is. When ounces can be both a weight measurement and a volume measurement, it makes for great confusion. I would assume the conversion from grams to ounces would still be a weight even though that is an ingredient (flour/ sugar) for which we would use a volume measurement.

yes that's a weight - if I had meant fluid measurements I would have added fluid ounce behind it as that would be the correct notation for that.

volume measurements are rather complicated to convert as each ingredient has a different amount for it to be converted to: flour for instance is lighter than sugar and one would need more cups of it to compensate. I assumed that it would be possible for someone as experienced in cooking as Polly is that she would manage to make sense of the ounce to cup ratio better than I ever could as I don't even know how big a "cup" is

I have always bought a scale that has both ounces and grams on it because I use both imperial and metric cook books. This NG has taught me that cooking scales are a rarity in the USA - an alien concept to me as this would be one of the first things I would replace if the house burnt down.

Yup my point exactly ...thanks for the clarity! I haven't had my Weight Watcher scale out for a while...(and it shows) but I think I could use it for these recipes. Thanks again.

If this link works properly, it is for the Christmas Cupcakes with US measurements.

Rita L.

Shar> has begun and is halfway over. I made the Christmas Cakes last week (1

8 liquid ounces. Take a coffee mug and put 8 ounces of water in it and mark a line at the top of the water. Empty the mug and dry it. Fill with flour up to the line you marked. Ta Da! You now have a cup of flour.

You cook by weights? What if you have to substitute one ingredient for another and they don't have the same density? Debra in VA See my quilts at

umm I don't do liquids by weight but I'll have a look anyway.

an ounce of sugar is an ounce of sugar even if it's a different kind and density is not a consideration when cooking by weight

basically cooking be weight and cooking by cup is like comparing Manx quilting with rotary cutting and sewing log cabins - two very different methods that result in a beautiful quilt ;-D

My SO bought a scale when he was "dieting", it measures in ounces or grams. Just push the button, it goes either way, it's kind of nice.

Bonnie, in Middletown, VA (Currently reading the group, with the Steelers vs. Bengals game on the studio/computer room TV, Steeler Fan of course, who, unfortunately, managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory last week.) Whew, talk about a run on sentence.

Alton Brown uses a scale for dry ingredients. He pointed out that a cup of flour (cup = 8 ounces by volume) un-sifted weighs more than a cup of flour that is sifted. So, that may be why some of our recipes don't turn out as expected!

Bonnie, in Middletown, VA