Gingerbread Latte Cupcakes/Petits gâteaux café au lait-pain d’épices

Brrr….I don’t know about you, but round here it’s Chills-Ville. Ya know? The type of cold that enters your bones and turns your blood to icicles.  During these troubled times, let’s all take a minute to appreciate the clever bloke that invented central heating.

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Right, now, back to me.  As you all know, I’m a Brit that doesn’t drink tea.  I don’t drink coffee either, hot chocolate’s my poision, which is generally reserved for special occasions such as these. I guess…the good thing about the Big Freeze is, it usually makes me want to jump in the kitchen and bake something, so I can’t really complain.  Me and my oven have been spending a lot more time together and the two of us came up with this….

Salted Caramel Cupcakes/Cupcakes au caramel au beurre salé

Recently a colleague (Ana) and I had a,…..shall we say ‘animated’ conversation about the unimportance of salt in baking.

It all started when she asked me to pick up some butter for a cake she wanted to bake with the kids and I asked her if she wanted salted or unsalted.

At this point she looked at me with a mixture of astonishment and disgust, as if I’d suggested we add a dead rat to the mixture.

Ana: “Salted Butter?” She exclaimed “What on earth would I need salt for?” She then threw her head back and gave a lovely impression of a Disney witch’s cackle

Me: “er, I dunno for it to like rise or something?” (I know! The type of answer you look back on and slap your palm to your forehead thinking did I really say that)

Ana: “That’s what the baking powder is for Curi, you don’t need salt!”

Me: “No, you do”, I said, “for the taste, it’s very important in baking”.

Ana: “Trust me Curi, I’ve been baking for a very long time and you don’t need salt in any baked recipe”.

This is where I ripped off my uniform to show the words CB emblazoned on my chest.

“DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?” I screamed

She circled the letters CB in mid air with her finger and a worried look replaced the self assured cackle of a few moments ago

“Yes I am non other than The Curious Baker, the writer/baker extraordinaire of the blog of the same name, with two hundred and forty nine, no two hundred and FIFTY Facebook fans” (thanks extra fan, your ‘Like’ gave me some clout, plus 250 looks so much nicer than 249, anyway I digress)…

She then whimpered “Oh! I’m so sorry  had no idea”.

O.K.. so this is what really happened…