Footy Finals Fever

The Grand Final of the 2009 NRL competition was last Sunday.

Every year for a while now, my Dad has hosted an end-of-season and footy tipping competition party at my parent's place for his work mates. They all put in money throughout the year to buy food and drinks and also usually bring along a plate of food to share with everybody. Since my boyfriend and I were going along this year, I decided I would make a cake to take over for dessert. Easy!

Then I got to thinking, wouldn't it be a good idea to take over some cupcakes (as I love making them and everyone loves a cupcake). The cupcake idea then rolled into football themed cupcakes and then football shaped cupcakes. I thought I would use a friand pan to get little cakes that were oval-shaped, which I would then ice to look like little footballs.

I used a vanilla cake recipe from an old Australian Women's Weekly cookbook and then chocolate buttercream icing and fudge icing for the piping (which I'm not very good at by the way).

For some final touches, I printed out the logos of all the teams in the NRL competition, plus the NRL corporate logo and the premiership logo, stuck them on mini-skewers and topped the cakes with them. I also took a photo of some green grass, printed it out, cut it to size, laminated it and used in on the serving plate so that the little footballs looked like they were sitting on the football field (you can't really see the grass in the photos).

I think they looked great and they went down a treat with all the guests at the party. I've supplied the recipe for the cakes and icing after the photos.







For the Vanilla Cupcakes
You will need:
125g butter
1 tsp vanilla essence
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 & 1/2 cups Self-Raising Flour, sifted
1/2 cup milk

Preheat your oven to around 190-200 degrees Celsius. Cream butter, sugar and vanilla essence until light and fluffy. Beat eggs in one at a time, until combined. Stir in half the flour and half the milk until combined and then add the remaining flour and milk. Pour the mixture into your tray (I used a friand pan to make the football shapes) and bake for approximately 15 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out clean.

For Chocolate buttercream icing
You will need:
3 tbsp butter
1 cup icing sugar
1 tbsp cocoa powder
milk

Mix the icing sugar and butter together (I use an electric beater to make it cream better) and once mixed, add some milk to make it creamy. You may need to add more butter or more icing sugar depending on the consistency of the icing you were after.

The fudge icing was ready-made in a tube, that I found in the baking aisle of the supermarket.

Maybe it is chocolate...

So, I know I said in my first post that this blog was not going to be about my adventures with chocolate cupcakes, but... I made a batch last night for a colleagues birthday and they looked so cute that I had to post about them. The recipe I use is so quick and easy, I thought I would share it with you.

Ahem, to make gorgeously easy chocolate cupcakes, you will need:

1 cup self-raising flour
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
90 grams butter, melted &
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

And, it all goes together like this:

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Line your muffin tin with paper cupcake cases.
Sift the flour and cocoa powder into a bowl.
Add all the other ingredients and beat well for 3 minute.
Divide the mixture amongst the cases and bake in the oven for around 15 minutes.
Let the cakes cool in the tin for 5 minutes and then turn them out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Ice them with chocolate buttercream icing like I have, or dust them with icing sugar to serve.

Don't they look cute?





I'm thinking of adding some raspberries to the mix next time to make choc-raspberry cupcakes, or making little fairy cakes, with chocolate cream. Yum!

Oh, and PS, the cakes were a big hit in the office this morning. Very, very happy engineers all round.