Happy birthday Mr X! Cookie monster cookies

As I mentioned in my last post, Mr X loves cookies. So I really wanted to incorporate cookies into his birthday cake. I came across some adorable cookie monster cupcakes using a google search. There are multiple sites featuring cookie monster cookies - by no means did I come up with something that cute and clever myself!


Ingredients:
Banana cupcakes, popular with Mr X (Recipe makes 16).
Cookies (Qty 8)
Cream cheese icing tinted with blue food dye.
White chocolate buttons (Qty of at least 32)
Dark chocolate, melted (Approx 6-8 squares)


Equipment:
Microwave safe bowl to melt the chocolate
Toothpicks


Method:

White chocolate button eyes 
Dip a toothpick in melted dark chocolate and add a small circles of dark chocolate to each white chocolate button. Try and make them all a similar size but don't be concerned if they all look a little different, I think it adds to the cookie monsters character. Leave to dry.

Icing
Slowly add blue food dye to the cream cheese icing until you achieve desired blue consistency. I made the icing the day before I needed it and left it in the fridge over night so it was nice and firm.


Bake cupcakes and cookies according to their instructions, and leave to cool to room temperature.

To assemble the cupcakes
Cover a cupcake with cream cheese frosting. You want it to be relatively smooth but not too smooth - you are creating a monster, after all. Add the eyes and the cookie - you may need to use a little more icing to hold the cookie in place. The icing will act as "glue". I popped them into the fridge to firm up. 

I know, there are a few steps involved if you make the cookies and cupcakes from scratch. I personally think it is worth baking them yourself, but that is entirely up to you. But once you get to the assembly stage, it all comes together quickly.

Baby banana cakes with cream cheese icing

I can't believe that my little brother turned 26 this month. I feel like time is flying by at a million miles an hour. He says he hates birthdays because he feels old .... how does he think I feel when he says that? Older.


He doesn't like us to make a fuss on his birthday, but I couldn't resist baking something for him. He is a little bit fussy (but getting better with age), so I made plain, un-iced baby banana cakes for him. Mr X took some to work with him, and I topped those with lemon cream cheese icing.


I used the Exclusively Food banana cake recipe, but replaced some of the white sugar with brown sugar.


Makes 16.
Ingredients:
125g unsalted butter, softened
1 cup white sugar 

1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons of very ripe, mashed banana (approx 3 large bananas)
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon (optional, I didn't use it this time)
2 large eggs
1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon buttermilk
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Method:

Preheat oven to 160 degrees C, and grease and line cupcake pans - enough for 14-16 cupcakes, depending on how full you make them.

Place butter, sugar, banana, vanilla and eggs in a food processor and pulse to combine for approximately two minutes. Add butter milk and pulse to combine.

Sift flour and bicarb soda into a bowl. Add this to the blender and pulse again until just combined, scraping down the sides if required.

Pour batter into prepared liners. I filled mine 2/3 full. I found filling them this amount resulted in a nice, very slightly domed cupcake.

The recipe can easily be doubled, however, in my experience you may find you can't put all the ingredients in the food processor at once! Just mix it up in a bowl instead.

Cream cheese icing

Ingredients:

100g cream cheese, softened

50g butter, softened
2  cups icing sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice

Method:
Beat the cream cheese and butter in a bowl until light and creamy, about 2 minutes. Sift in the icing sugar and beat well.