Milo Cupcakes (Primose Bakery)

Did you know that MILO comes from Australia? See this!

In 1934, Australian chemist, Thomas Mayne created the nutritious beverage Milo and launched it at the Sydney Royal Easter Show. The name, Milo was derived from the famous Ancient Greek athlete who was known for his legendary strength.

I grew up drinking Milo... thinking that Milo is a Malaysian-Singaporean popular drink but I was totally wrong. Then, I learned that Milo is in fact popular too in many parts of the world. Interestingly, Milo can taste very different in different manufacturing countries. So far, I have tasted the Australian, Singaporean and British ones and true enough I can detect the minor differences in the three different origins.

When I first saw this recipe at Primrose Bakery app, I bookmarked it immediately, waiting for the most appropriate occasion to bake these appealing cupcakes. After feeling a little disappointed with my previous bake-along celebration cupcake baking with Joyce from Kitchen Flavours and Lena from Frozen wings , I have decided to bake another batch celebration cupcakes... 

HAPPY that I have baked these Milo cupcakes! Although the comparison of these Milo cupcake to my previous vanilla cupcakes are not exactly apples to apples, I can't help to think that these Milo cupcakes are really really really so much better. The Milo cake bases are moist, fluffy and delicious. With no added fat, their Italian-meringue-kind of marshmallow icing is surprisingly creamy and compliment these cupcakes very well. We are all happy eating these cupcakes and me completely satisfied now that I have baked good celebration cupcakes for our Bake-along 2nd anniversary. Cheers!
 
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It is the time of the year that I need a holiday again... My family and I will be having a break in Singapore and Taipei for the next coming 2-3 weeks and will return on 29 May 2013 with Seeded Crackers (a bake-along post). See ya!

Milo Cupcakes! Feeling strong eating these?

Making the milk-yogurt mixture which is essential to give an overall nice and curdling texture

Making the cupcakes

Making sugar syrup for the marshmallow icing

Light and yet creamy fluffy icing!

Assembling the cupcakes

They look like Milo roses to me!

Yum!

Here's the recipes from Primrose Bakery app
(with my notes and modification on blue)

Milo Cupcakes

112g butter (I used 125g)
120g light soft brown sugar
100g caster sugar (reduced to 50g)
2 eggs
125ml milk
1 tbsp sour cream (replaced with yogurt)
60g plain flour
125g self-raising flour
50g Milo powder
Milo powder (to decorate)
 
Preheat the oven to 180°C (or 160°C fan forced). Line a 12-hole muffin tray with muffin cases.

Cream the butter and sugars until pale and smooth. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing briefly after each addition.

Sift together the flours and the Milo powder. Measure the milk into a jug and stir in the sour cream (or yogurt).

Add one-third of the flour and Milo mix and beat well . Pour in one-third of the milk and beat again. Repeat until all the flour and milk has been added. (I fold in both by hand.)

Spoon the mixture into the muffin cases, and bake in the center of the oven for about 25 mins (I baked mine for 23 mins), until risen and golden.

Leave to cool in their tin for 10 mins and then carefully transfer onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Once cool, ice with Marshmallow Icing and sprinkle with Milo.

Marshmallow Icing
 
½ tsp vanilla extract (I didn't add this)
120g granulated sugar
80g golden syrup
1½ tbsp water
2 egg whites

Put the sugar, golden syrup and water into a pan and cook on a high heat for about 2 mins until the mixture thickens and turns golden (the soft ball stage).

Whisk the egg whites until soft peaks start to form. Then keep beating while you slowly pour the hot sugar mixture into the bowl.

Continue beating but at a higher speed until the mixture becomes thick, glossy and cool. Add the vanilla extract towards the end.

This icing is easiest to work with while it is still a little warm, so try to use it right away. You can store it in the fridge overnight - but beat well with a spoon before reusing.

Note: This amount of icing is too much to ice 12 cupcakes but I reckon that half of amount of the recipe might be difficult to prepare.

Happy Baking

Here are our baking friends that have joined us for this bake-along. Please visit their blogs for more of their celebration cupcakes baking.

Please submit your details if you wish to link your post with this bake-along. This linking tool is open from 2 to 12 May 2013.

For our next bake-along, we are baking Seeded Crackers (Recipe from Williams-Sonoma, Essentials of Baking, Pg 279 or here) which is to be posted on 29 May 2013. Please bake-along with us! All you need to do is to bake these crackers and blog hop with us on this day or within the next 10 days.

To blog hop with us, simply copy and paste this linky HTML code into your blog post where you want the blog hop list to appear. Make sure you are in HTML view/mode when you paste in the code. get the InLinkz code
 
Before using this linky tool, please make sure that: (1) Your post must be a current post. (2) Please mention Bake-Along in your post and link back to any of our hosts' Bake-Along post, (Joyce, Lena or Zoe). (3) Appreciate if you can display the Bake-Along badge in your post when linking up with us. Cheers!

Once again... Happy 2nd Birthday to our Bake-Along!

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Before leaving from this post, the naggy me would like to remind everyone that the MUSHROOM event for Little Thumbs Up (MAY 2013) is still on-going. The MUSHROOM event starts on the 7th May 2013 and my baking buddy, Joyce from Kitchen Flavours is the hostess for this theme.

Don't forget too to participate our next Cook like a Star, Curtis Stone blog hop event starting on 1st July 2013. This event is hosted by me, Bake for Happy Kids, Baby Sumo from Eat your heart out and Grace from Life can be simple.

Mushroom Ragoût with Oven-baked Polenta (Nigella Lawson)

When I was serving these for our dinner, both my husband and son were staring at me and these dishes with their starving eyes...

Man: Where is the meat?
Me, trying to explain: Eeerrr...

To me, this almost vegan mushroom ragoût with oven-baked polenta (minus the chicken stock) is a simple but elegant autumn meal to eat.

To my husband and son, these are plain boring!

With much persuasions, both father and son reluctantly eat most of these but the poor me had to tolerate all these no-meat winching. My son can tell that I was feeling a little disappointed and gave me a sympathetic thumbs up... 

We love mushrooms and eat at least a large bag of mushrooms at least once a week. I wasn't expecting any of these negative remarks and wonder if I have cooked this mushroom dish well enough with my Italian-Asian mushrooms combination. Accordingly to Nigella's description, the more wild ones the better... I wasn't too sure about eating too much wild mushrooms with unexpected assorted woody, tough or chewy textures. And so, I didn't want to take the chance of exploring the wild mushrooms and choose to play safe cooking with these three types of mushrooms that can be commonly found in our local deli and supermarket. 

My first choice is porcino. Widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere across Europe, Asia, and North America, these mushrooms are not found naturally in the Southern Hemisphere. It is very difficult to cultivate and mostly sold being dried. It is used in many cuisines especially in Italian pasta or risotto. My second choice is shiitake which is a commonly consumed by most Chinese and Japanese with a strong earthy taste. My third choice is the mild-tasting oyster mushroom. I chose this for its thick, meaty white stem and also its milder taste to neutralize the overall combination of other stronger-tasting mushrooms.

To me, although these mushrooms in this Italian-Asian combination seems unusual but should be nice for a balance of texture and taste. However, knowing that these are boring for my husband and son, I'm now asking myself... Are these mushrooms not wild enough for us?... As you read further and you will see why...

Mushroom ragoût with oven-baked polenta

My mushroom number one: porcino

The other two types mushrooms that I have used and other ingredients

More ingredients...

Cooking the onions and celery...

... and the mushrooms

Cooking the sauce for this dish

All done! This Italian-Asian mushroom combination looks good, isn't it?

Preparing the polenta for baking

After baking...

Eating the mushrooms with the baked polenta. Nice for me but not for my husband and son...

Here's the sympathetic thumbs up from my son :(

As you can see, this dish was not popular in my family. We managed to finish half of the mushroom ragoût and had the rest as leftovers. Subsequently, I used the leftover by stirring it into 3-4 cups of warm cooked rice and 1 can of 420g sweet corn kernels. I served these leftover to my husband and son, telling them that these are mushroom fried rice. Guess what? Everything was gone without any complains! At this point, I would like to conclude that there is nothing wrong with this mushroom ragoût. I'm guessing that the only reason is we might be a little too Asian for this dish.

Here are the recipes.
(with my personal notes in blue)

Mushroom Ragoût adapted from the book, How to Eat by Nigella Lawson
Serves 3-4
(which half of the original recipe)

400g fresh mushrooms, or a combination of wild and cultivated
(I used a combination of 80g dried and soaked porcini, 150g abalone mushroom and 100g shiitake)
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp butter
1 red onion, sliced finely
2 stalks celery, sliced thinly
1 clove garlic, finely minced
2/3 cup dry red wine (original recipe uses 175 ml and I'm using 160 ml for half the recipe)
35ml Marsala
2 bay leaves
1/4 tsp thyme leaves
1/2 tbsp flour, preferably Italian OO
200ml chicken stock
50ml "mushroom water", water that I have used to soak the dried porcini
extra thyme to garnish

Wipe mushrooms thoroughly, trim off tough or woody stems and slice or cut them into generous pieces.

Heat 1 tsp of olive oil in a frying plan and sauté the onion and celery in a pan until they begin to soften.

Add garlic and some salt and pepper and continue cooking until onions begin to brown. Add half the red wine and half the Marsala, bay leaf and thyme. Turn down the heat and simmer gently until wine cooks away.

In a separate pan, sauté mushrooms with 1 tsp of olive oil, 1 tbsp of butter and a pinch of salt until their excess liquid cooks away and begin to colour. Add the remaining wine and Marsala and allow the wine to simmer down. Transfer onions to the mushrooms.

Re-use the pan that was used to sautéed the onions. In this pan, melt 1 tbsp of butter. Stir in the flour and keep stirring for a few minutes while it turns golden. Whisk in the stock and mushroom water. Add this sauce to the mushrooms and onions. Simmer very gently for 10 mins. Serve with steamed or boiled rice or polenta.

Oven-Baked Polenta adapted from the book, How to Eat by Nigella Lawson or here

Butter for greasing dish and foil
1.8L stock (any kind) or water
(I used chicken stock)
Salt to taste
350g polenta meal

Preparation

Butter a shallow 2 1/2- to 3-quart baking dish or ramekins, and set aside. Place stock or water and salt into a large saucepan, and bring to simmer. Remove pan from heat.

Heat oven to 350°F or 160°C fan forced. Slowly pour polenta into stock, stirring rapidly with a wooden spoon. Place pan on medium heat. Slowly bring to a boil, stirring constantly in same direction. Boil 5 mins, continuing to stir.

Pour polenta into buttered dish or ramekins, and cover with buttered foil. Bake for 1 hour or 45 min for ramekins. Remove foil and serve.

Happy Cooking and Baking

This post is linked to the event, Little Thumbs up organised by Doreen from my little favourite DIY and me, Bake for Happy Kids, hosted by Joyce from Kitchen Flavours, at this post.

 

The Little Thumbs Up event starts on first Tuesday until the last day of the month. Please join us! To join, simply cook or bake any recipe with the theme of the month which is MUSHROOM  for May 2013 and link with us at this post anytime until 31st May 2013. Don't forget your thumbs up or display this badge! And make sure that: (1) Your post must be a current post preferably within May 2013 . (2) Please mention Little Thumbs Up in your post and link back to Bake for Happy Kids, my little favourite DIY or/and Joyce from Kitchen Flavours. For more details, please see this.

What after May 2013? Miss B from Everybody Eats Well in Flanders will be the next hostess of JUNE 2013 and her theme is CURRY powder or paste! All the upcoming ingredient themes and hosts for the forthcoming months are listed at "Little Thumbs Up" side bar of my blog and hope that you can join in the fun of this event. Thumbs up!