2011 Ice Cream Cupcake Contest - Thai Ginger Cupcakes

Apparently I have to preface this blog with a picture of the compelted product, simply because the stupid message board on the contest FB page keeps telling me that there's an error with uploading my picture. Hopefully the thumbnail on the link to my blog counts... I'd hate to be disqualified for not having posted the actual photo. Pleeeeeease, competition organisers, pleeeeeease... show me some mercy!!!

ZOMG!!! I totally forgot about this until I was was having a fat week and reading a weight loss blog today (heh. I love irony. I said IRONY, not IRONING!!!).

Also, please forgive the formatting. I wrote the draft in Outlook on 2 different computers, and... well, it decided to do its own thang. Wow, it really is. No matter how many times I highlight the text and change the font size, the font size I am typing in remains smaller than the stuff that came in the email. Plus the margins are all up the creek.

Ok, I may have figured out the font problem. Maybe.

The dealy-o is this:

      You can enter any time through June 15, 2011 (I don't know whether this is inclusive, but for us Australians, Kiwis and various islanders leading the charge towards the International Date Line, that level of detail probably won't be an issue).

      
 You have to blog about your ice cream-cupcake creation before the 15^th, including a photo, recipe and link to the posts about the competition, both at www.cupcakeproject.com and at Scoopalicious (done!)

    
  You have to post a photo of your cupcake to the Cupcake Project Facebook Wall (which means that I have to find it!!!), including the title of your cupcake and link to your post in the photo caption

    
  Last but not least, you have to complete the entry form, the link to which is available at cupcakeproject.com.

    
   I opted to make ginger cupcakes with a toasted cocount and lime topping. Let's call them Thai Ginger Cupcakes, because we can (and because they contain some very Thai elements - ginger, lime and coconut. Note that next time I would consider experimenting with using green tea icecream instead of vanilla and ginger)

SO! To the recipe (and to the seriously retarded formatting. It just gets worse. I'm so sorry):

THE CAKE:

125g butter
1c sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2c plain flour, sifted
1tsp bicarb soda
2tsp ground ginger
1tsp cinnamon
2tsp mixed spice
2tbsp treacle
1c milk

Pretty self explanatory - Get out your favourite red mixing bowl.

Cream butter and sugar. Eat some because you have no self control at all. 

Add eggs, add milk and flour alternately in 3 batches and stir until smooth. Stare at the batter, thinking "I'm surprised they didn't use brown sugar in this recipe. That would have made it a richer colour and less sweet" and then realise you haven't added the warmed treacle (zap it in the microwave, ten seconds at a time, until it is sufficiently runny to part company with the bowl easily). Add warmed treacle. Lick treacle spoon. Marvel at how bitter it is, yet what a nice flavour it has.

Fill your patty pans to about half what you normally would, and bake at 180OC (160OC F/F) until they "look right", which should be about 15-20 minutes (the recipe I used was for a cake, which should be baked for 50 or so minutes, I believe in a square pan, but I can't really remember, but what I DO remember is that it said you should ice it with pink icing. Ahh, CWA Country Classics, how I loveth thee!)

THE TOPPING (not an exact science):

1a. Take vanilla icecream out of the freezer and let it sit on the bench to make it easier to handle (notice how little icecream we go through? I actually had to buy icecream for the express purpose of entering this competition!)

1b. Toast a little under a cup of shredded coconut in a nonstick frypan until lightly browned in places. Watch out - it burns very easily!

2. Revel in the fact that you're marrying a man who brought a microplane zester into the relationship (seriously. How awesome is that!)

3. Zest a lime and toss it through the cocount. Realise during editing how close that typo was to a word that you really hate. Make sure your readers know that you meant "coconut"!

4. Chop up NAKED ginger and mix through icecream (crystallised ginger would be too sweet. I decided to add ginger to the icecream to make it less sweet)

ASSEMBLY:

Once cool (unless you're impatient, like me), trim cupcakes down to a good height if need be. Smoosh some vanilla icecream around until you can make it hold the shape you wanted (I used one of those little Pyrex food prep dishes as a mould, and that worked quite well).

 Roll the top in the cocounut/lime mixture. Return to the freezer if the icecream is a little runny. Take them out more quickly than you should because you really, really want to eat one. Bemoan the fact that in order to trim the cupcake you had to handle the wrapper, which made it all stupid and limp, and realise that next time, for presentation purposes, you should probably pop a fresh cupcake wrapper on the outside

(Note that I stole the topping idea from Donna Hay's Instant Entertainer, which has a "recipe" for these delicious icecream sandwiches. Take 2 icecream wafers (and you could probably fancy them up by using those thin, round wafers that are often served with cheese, which the recipe may actually call for, but all I had was the regular wafers, plus they're more robust than the thin ones) and put a slice of vanilla icecream in it. Roll the exposed icecream in the coconut/lime mixture. ATTENTION ALL FRIENDS WHO I OCCASIONALLY INVITE TO DINNER: PLEASE DISREGARD THIS INCREDIBLY SIMPLE AND EFFECTIVE DESSERT RECIPE, AND CONTINUE TO COMMENT ON HOW FANCY AND DELICATE THIS DESSERT IS. THANK YOU IN ADVANCE.)

And that's about it.

Now all you have to do is eat it!

Oh yeah. And blog about them. And then enter the contest. That's the hard part. Especially when you want to go to bed...