Bangkok Cakes

I’m still missing Bangkok a whole whole lot. It was by far my favourite stop in Asia, it had a real east-meets-west vibe about it. All the culture with all the home comforts.

Before I embarked on my year in Stockholm, I had a cake making urge which resulted in these. They aren’t the neatest piece of work, but I had very little time.

I’m glad I did it though, despite the negative effect it had on my packing, because my new flat doesn’t have an oven! I’m outraged, but thankfully the solution is pretty simple; buy an oven.

The recipe for the cakes was the same as my rose and vanilla cupcakes, minus the rose and plus the gluten! The decorations are of some of my favourite places in Bangkok, and like any city, it’s unique coloured taxis.

Sadly, I can’t comment on how they tasted. My pesky labrador got to them before I’d even finished my dinner, so I guess I should only be thankful that they weren’t chocolate 🙂 But she ate all of them, so I guess they must have tasted pretty good.

Also, I was toying with the photo editor on my computer when I first took these photos about 3 weeks ago. From the tiny previews, I couldn’t tell which ones were the ones I’d been ‘experiemental’ on (to say the least) and which were the ones i’d just given a bit of a retouch and were supposed to be for this post!
I guess it will be a surprise for everyone when I post this, including me!

OREO MINI CUPCAKES

This time, I’m in Thailand, Chiang Mai to be specific. To be even more specific, I’m in an internet cafe next to a junior monk who had to point out I was trying to get on the computer while it was turned off.

 

This is another recipe I did before I went away, and added to my recipe bank. I’ve not posted in a week, as I’ve been staying pretty much in the forest, volunteering at a little place called the Elephant Nature Park. I won’t go into too much detail about the volunteering, but I will say, if you truly love elephants and want to experience working with them, this is the best and only place to go. What makes this place different is that the elephants are trained through positive reinforcement, rather than the traditional (and still most common) training technique called crushing, which is beating the elephant into submission. Domestic elephants are part of Thailand’s culture, and while it’s not something I wholly support, I can respect their culture but not their methods, which is why I would recommend ENP. All the elephants have been rescued from cruel situations and roam free over 150 acres of open land. While it would probably not be ethical to realease them into the wild, due to the fact they would probably not survive, this is definitely the closest to it they can safely and happily get.

 

Anyway, enough of that, maybe when I can load my photos i will do a post on it, but oreo cupcakes.

I had fairly recently discovered that Oreos are vegan when making these, and because I like my cooking, obviously found it too plain and conventional to eat them out of the packet. The cases were something I picked up in Lakeland (a cookshop) before I knew I was going to make these, because they were too adorable not to buy. They even had little dome lids. These were one of my favourite cupcakes so far due to the texture of the bettercream. I added just a tablespoon of sweetener which made it very light and fluffy, but omit this if you don’t like artificial sweeteners for health or taste reasons.

 

Ingredients (makes 10 small):

 

1 cup plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 cup caster sugar

2 tbsp soy milk

1 cup vegan butter/spread (i used a sunflower based one)(half for cake batter and half for the buttercream)

1/4 cup cocoa (plus 1 tbsp for frosting)

1 cup powdered sugar

2 packets of mini oreos

1 tbsp sweetener such as Splenda

 

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Cream the caster sugar and half a cup of butter.

2. Mix in the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder. Add the soy milk gradually until it becomes a thick batter.

3. Crush one of the packets of oreos and add to the batter.

4. Spray or grease the cake cases and bake at 180C  for 12-15 minutes.

5. Cream together the remaining butter, cocoa and sweetener for the buttercream. Once the cakes have cooled, pipe on the frosting and top with another mini oreo.