Chocolate fudge cupcake with dulce de leche buttercream and Cocktail night at Gilbert scotts

Remember, in my previous post I mentioned that I will be doing a detailed post on the exciting goodie bag voucher I got from SMW food photography event?? So today I am going to ramble about that fun day I had with my blogger buddies Nisha, Suchi, Manjiri and Gayatri.

Night out with friends is fun, especially with like minded blogger friends, so when we all found out that our goodie bag had this exciting voucher for a free cocktail at Gilbert scotts, we all decided not to miss the chance to go to the famous GB scotts and to taste their 1873 cocktail. On our arrival, we had a table  reserved for us. All thanks to Natasha, marketing manager for that :) We sat down and settled in our table admiring the beauty of the decor. This victorian style restaurant had so much to offer, the ornately painted high ceilings, revolving door, ball chandeliers etc etc. We were thrilled when we were given a hotel tour including the kitchen by Mark Cesareo, the restaurant manager. While we listened to the great history of the hotel, we clicked a few pictures too.This hotel named after the famous architect George Gilbert Scott is luxurious with beautiful decor thorough out and has got a magical charm.The intersting bit was that this hotel was bombed three times  during World war 2 but it remained unharmed !! Mark walked us thorough the restaurant, private dining hall, beautiful hall way, stairway and the great kitchen. Being in a kitchen of such a busy restaurant, watching  chefs cook was so exciting and was definitely the best part of the tour  for me. So with a content heart, we  headed back to our table and enjoyed our cocktails and some cocktail  bites. It was a perfect evening in everyway! 

BELL CHANDELIERS

PRIVATE DINING HALL

KITCHEN

BAR

                                                                                            Image coutsey - Gilbert Scott

RESTAURANT

                                                                             Image courtsey - Gilbert Scott

Coming to todays post, I made these cupcakes for submitting it for Bloggers buzz BBPC assignment. Since we were asked to post a cupcake picture and a recipe I decided to come up with something I havent tried yet. After lots of thinking finally I decided to try  chocloate fudge cupcakes and for frosting I decided to go with dulca de leche buttercream as I had some Nestle caramel waiting to be used in my freezer. I am so happy with the outcome, the cupcake itself was so delcious and I dont see any need of frosting but since it was for an assignment I decided to frost it and they were absolutely delicious !

Ingredients( for cupcakes) makes 12 mini cupcakes

Recipe for cupcakes adapted from  - Easy desserts by Marks and Spencers

Plain flour - 112 gm

Almond flour / ground almond - 27 gm

Baking powder - 1 tsp

Salt - pinch

Plain chocolate - 42 gm (melted)

Unsalted Butter - 112 gm (softnened )

Light muscavado sugar - 112 gm

soft Vanilla fudge(diced ) - 57gm

Eggs - 2 large

Boiled water - 1 tbs

Method

1. Sift flour, baking powder and salt and keep it aside.
2. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy.
3. Beat two eggs lightly and add them gradually to the creamed butter.
4. Add sifted flour and fold in.
5. Mix almond flour in 1 tbs of boiled and cooled water and fold this in to the batter.
6. Add melted chocolate and fold in.
7. Add diced vanilla fudge and fold in.
8. Line a cupcake tin and fill the cupcake liners with 3/4 th batter and bake in a preheated oven at 180 degree celcius for 20- 25 minutes until tooth pick inserted comes out clean.

For Dulce de leche buttercream ( for decorating 6 mini cupcakes)

Butter - 100 gm

Icing sugar - 200 gm

Double cream - 50 ml

Meringue powder - 1 tsp

Dulce de leche/ nestle caramel - 1 1/2 tbs

Vanilla extract - 1tsp

Salt - pinch

Method

1. In a mixing bowl add 1/3 rd of the sugar,salt, meringue powder and mix.
2. Add cream to it and beat for 5 minutes in an electric mixer with paddle attachment.
3. Add remaiining sugar and beat for 3 minutes.
4. Add butter little by littel and beat for 5- 7minutes
5. Add vanilla extract, dulce  de leche and beta for 30 seconds in very slow speed.

F 2.8, ISO 100, SHUTTER SPEED 1/60

sending this post for BBPC # session 2 assignment