And it’s 10 years of Carnival bakes! As first post of this milestone year 2024, I can’t believe how long it has been since that Fat Tuesday baking afternoon I spent in Sweden during my Erasmus exchange program as a sociology Master student.
If you have been following me a little bit in the past years, you probably know that Fat Tuesday is quite a big event for Aroma di Cannella (for an overview, you can see the post carousel at the end of this page). And, as tradition calls, I spent some time over the past weekend doing some Carnival bakes with my Nederlander.
Again, as I already mentioned in the past, TulipLand is not much into traditional Carnival bakes – although yesterday I found that THERE ARE some deep fried sweets baked at Carnival in the south of the country, where they mostly celebrate this festivity, so something to keep in mind for next year!
Anyway, I had to get creative this time and I came up with something simple but very festive, that reminded me the colors and sparkles of the Carnival parades I used to go to when I was a kid: A cupcake with a nice jam filling and joyful sugary sprinkles is just right for the occasion!
Happy Fat Tuesday! And stay tuned…more to celebrate with the official blog-anniversary coming soon!
CARNIVAL CUPCAKES
Ingredients (for 12 cupcakes)
For the vanilla cupcakes
100 gr sunflower oil
135 gr sugar
16 gr vanilla sugar (or use vanilla extract)
265 gr flour
100 gr milk
2 eggs
10gr baking powder
For decoration
12 tsp of bitter orange jam (or different flavour, my recommendation is better not too sweet to avoid the whole cupcake turns out too sweet) + 6 tsp for brushing
Coloured sprinkles
(Almond flakes optional, recommend if you use the aluminium cups for baking the cupcakes and want to remove them)
Prepare the cupcake dough
Mix the oil with the sugars with a mixer, and then add one egg each time. In a bowl, combine the flour and the baking powder; add them to the dough of sugar, butter and eggs, alternating with the milk.The final batter should result soft and smooth.
Bake the cupcakes
Fill the cupcake silicon cups (or like in my case, aluminium ones) with the dough and cook the cupcakes in pre-heated static oven, 180°, for 20-25 minutes.
Fill the cupcakes
Once ready and let cool down, use the handle of a teaspoon to create a hole in the middle of the cupcakes and add 1 tsp of jam. In each one Proceed in this way for all cupcakes.
Decorate and…happy Fat Tuesday!
In a bowl, mix the remaining jam with a few tbs of water to make it more syrup texture.
(If you bake the cupcakes in their paper wrap, you can skip this step) Remove the cupcakes from the aluminium cup. With a brush tool, brush the side of the cupcakes with the jam syrup and then decorate with almond flakes.
Brush the top of the cupcakes with the jam syrup and decorate with colored sprinkles.
Aroma di cannella 