Baking Oreo Cupcakes

A couple of weeks back, I baked these super easy and delicious Oreo cupcakes and took some pictures to share the recipe with you all, so here they are, hope you enjoy!

YOU WILL NEED:

* 1 cup of flour

* 1 cup of sugar

* 3 teaspoons of baking powder

* 3 eggs

* Half a cup of oil

* Half a cup of water

* 3 packets of Oreos

*  2 cups icing sugar (confectioners sugar)

* 125g butter

* Vanilla essence

* Pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celcius/ 350 degrees Farenheit. 

So first thing to do is to sieve the flour, ordinary sugar and baking powder into a mixing bowl. 

Now add the oil, water and 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence. 

Next, you need to separate all three eggs. Put the whites into a fairy large bowl as we are going to whisk them just now. Toss the yolks into your flour-sugar-oil-water mixture and mix it all up with a whisk/spoon until the yolks are properly blended in. 

The egg whites need to be beaten now, and I highly suggest you use an electric whisk if you can! Beat them on high until they are stiff enough that they won't fall out the bowl if you tipped it upside down. When they are stiff, add another teaspoon of vanilla essence and mix that in. 

Fold the whites into the batter now, do so with a spatula and make sure you don't stir it any more than it needs. 

Take 3/4 of a packet of Oreos and use a food processor to make them into tiny little crumbs. You could rather do this by hand by popping them in a sandwich bag and hitting them with a rolling pin, but either way make sure they are very fine. Add the Oreo crumbs to the batter. 

They are almost ready to go into the oven. But first, put cupcake holders into your cupcake tins and at the bottom of each holder, place down a whole Oreo for a little treat at the bottom. 

Now pour the batter into the holders and put them in the oven for 15-25 minutes, it completely depends on your oven, but I'd start checking from about 15 minutes. To tell if they're done, just stick a knife or toothpick into them and they are done if it comes out clean (without any batter on it). 

When they are done, let them cool completely. Meanwhile, you can make the icing. To make this, let the butter soften (if you do this by putting it in the microwave, make sure it doesn't melt, just softens) and then combine it with the icing sugar (sifted), 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence and 3/4 of a pack of ground up Oreos again. If the Oreos make it too thick, just add a little cold water. And if it is too runny, add some more icing sugar. 

Now you can ice the cupcakes and for a little last decoration, add half an Oreo on top. 

And that's it! I hope you enjoy!

(This recipe was "inspired" by Tanya Burr's video on them, but the actual icing and cupcake recipes are mine :) ) 

Happy baking!

More Belated Christmas Cookies

So, on the day that I made my Christmas Gingerbread Cookies I also made a huuuge batch of my absolute favourite type of cookies.

I made these delicious peanut and chocolate chip biscuits which were really so easy. It's basically a very basic recipe for butter cookies with a huge amount of chocolate and peanuts added in, but I have finally found the perfect basis (like the butter biscuit recipe) to make these. I cut them into christmas-sy shapes but they are not really specific to christmas at all, so you could just roll them into little balls and squish them lightly with a fork or use any other types of cookie-cutters.

1) Start by sifting all the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl. These will include: 560ml (2 and a quarter cups) of cake flour and 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda).

2) In a separate mixing bowl, cream together 155g of very soft 

 butter, 175ml of muscovado (soft brown) sugar and 60ml of normal white sugar with a spatula. Whisk in 2 eggs and 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence.

3) Now add the wet ingredients (the egg, butter and sugar mixture) to the dry ingredients. Blend until a relatively thick dough is formed. 

4) Chop up very roughly (so in quite big chunks) 250g of milk chocolate and 140g of white chocolate. Add the roughly chopped chocolate into the dough as well as 150g of peanuts. Use your hands to mix them into the dough, to form a thick, chunky ball of dough. The chocolate and peanuts will look like they're far exceeding the amount of dough, but use your discretion, the mixture is meant to be very chunky. 

5) Now roll out the dough over a lightly floured surface. Note that this will seem pretty hard to roll out because of all the nuts and chocolate, but it will work. And cut them into the shapes you want with cookie-cutters. 

6) Place your cookies onto a greased baking tray, or a Silpat over a baking tray and cook them at 180 degrees Celsius (350F) for 8-10 mins. They burn easily so make sure to watch them and take them out when they're quite firm and golden. Let them cool for a few minutes and there you go. Delicious :) 

I hope you enjoy my chocolate chip and peanut cookies!