This Edible Flower Chocolate Cupcake recipe is all you need for brightening up your day!
It has chocolate, chocolate chips, edible flowers and all the yumminess you can ever imagine!
They do not contain eggs & you don’t need a piping bag to frost these cupcakes!
Sounds simple right?
When I first heard of edible flowers being used for baking, I was amazed.
It’s quite a norm to use edible flowers these days and why not? Flowers do make anything prettier, don’t they?
There’s just something about flowers that spells beauty.
So yeah, that’s why I decided to add edible flowers and bake these cupcakes.
My husband is quite fond of gardening, so used homegrown edible flowers for this one. It’s a flower called globe amaranth. I used the petals of this flower. You can use any edible flower you like. Even edible rose petals would be awesome!
Me and my husband are all for being ‘healthy’ and like the low sugar cupcakes better. Hence, I have used less sugar in this recipe. You can tweak it like I have mentioned below, as per your taste.
So sharing with all of you this very very simple and yummy recipe which I had originally made for Valentine’s Day.
Show yourself and your near and dear ones some love!
Ingredients
1. Corn Flour 2 cups
2 White flour (Maida) 2 cups
3. Sugar- 6-7 tbsps or as per taste. (I used around 4-5 tbsps sugar for low sugar cupcakes)
4. Cocoa powder 2 tbsps
5. Vanilla extract 1-2 tbsps
6. Coconut milk (or any other milk of your choice) 1 cup
7. 1- 2 tbsps olive oil
8. Baking soda 1-2 tbsps
Frosting:
1. 4 tbsps butter (vegan or normal butter)
2. 1 cup sugar.
3. 1 tbsp cocoa powder
4. 1 tbsp vanilla extract
5. Edible flowers and/or chocolate chips. (Optional). I used the petals of edible flower- globe amaranth for decoration since they have a neutral flavour and look pretty too!
Procedure:
1. Mix all in all the ingredients except baking soda. First mix the dry ingredients and then add the milk and oil. You can add water if required.
2. Preheat your oven to 180°C While it preheats you can add baking soda to the mix. Stir in one direction. Don’t stir too much. Let batter sit till preheating is done.
Batter
3. After your oven has preheated, pour your batter inside the moulds of your muffin pan. Do not fill batter completely in the moulds or it will overflow. Batter should fill around 3/4th of your muffin pan moulds.
4. Bake each batch of cupcakes for 15 min at 180°C
5. After they are done, remove the pan and then slowly remove your cupcakes from the pan.
That’s it! Now you need to decorate your muffins.
In order to decorate, you must allow your baked chocolate cupcakes to cool down first.
Till then you can make the frosting.
For frosting-
1. Let the butter soften at room temperature. Do not microwave it at all.
2. Add the sugar and stir. Keep adding powdered sugar till it starts forming a cream and starts stiffening.
3. Add in the cocoa powder & vanilla extract.
4. Add a few chocolate chips
5. Once cupcakes have cooled, frost them using a spoon. Just spread the frosting on top with a spoon. You do not need a piping bag, although you can use one if you wish.
6. Sprinkle edible flower petals on top or add some more chocolate chips for decoration and skip sprinkling the edible flowers altogether.
That’s it. Your pretty cupcakes are ready to bite into!
Travel Travel Travel.. If you know me or have read my posts you’d know I have a thing for traveling and do so every once in a while.
Recently we (my husband and I) visited Krabi, one of the lesser known and more family-friendly destinations in Thailand. Most tourists visiting Thailand either flock to Bangkok or Pattaya or Phuket.
We did a 5 day trip to Krabi from Singapore. (our current resident country.)
Sharing a few interesting things we did so that you can do them too!
Will share with you all the tours that we went on, the food we ate, the places we stayed and so much more!! Read on…
Day 1
Hong Island Tour
This is one of the lesser known tours of Krabi. The Hong Island tour covers 3 islands, Pak bia, Paradise and of course the Hong Island. We opted to take the speedboat and we traveled smoothly to all the islands.
Hong Island- Krabi
The tour guide was very friendly, gave lots of information, arranged the vegetarian lunch we had asked for and told us which were the better areas to snorkel.
I think the best place I have been to in my life by far, is the Hong island tour. It’s literally heaven on earth, with it’s pristine clear waters in different hues of blue and green and the gusty wind blowing throughout. I kept inhaling the pure air in deep breaths and was amazed at how beautiful the nature and the waters are.
The best thing to do at these islands?? Snorkeling!!
I’m Snorkeling ready 😀
Now, I am a complete novice at snorkeling and this was the first time I did it. Trust me, I was scared, even though my husband (who’s done it before) kept assuring me it’s not that scary.
At first, I was quite hesitant to do it. After much contemplation, I decided to go ahead. After all, it was my one chance to try something new and different. So I wore all the snorkeling equipment and decided to take the plunge!!!
Trust me, it was the best decision I made! We saw a large variety of fish, sea anemones, sea cucumbers and even small sharks! ( these are the small ones, they don’t eat humans.. in case you are wondering.. 😀 )
The water is so divinely clear that everything under the surface is seen clearly.
The best part about the islands at Krabi are the huge limestone formations in various shapes standing out like mountains in between the water. They are the ones that truly enhance the beauty of each of the islands.
So yeah, that was quite an experience!
Hong Island – Krabi
I was enthralled, mind-boggled, dazed by the beauty of the Hong island and returned to the hotel, with lots of memories!!
Day 2
4 Island Tour.
Now this is one of the most popular tours in Krabi. It covers the Phra Nang Cave/aka the Princess Cave island, Tup aka Chicken Island and the Poda Island.
Poda Island- Krabi
Now, we had booked the Longtail boat this time which moves slower than the speedboat, so unlike the previous day, it took a lot of time for boat to reach the destinations.
The tour guide although polite was least interested in sharing any information. Worse, they had crammed a lot of tourists in one boat and frankly, it was quite bothersome.
The amount of time we spent at each island was lesser than the amount of time taken to travel there. We made a mental note to travel next time around only by speed boat.
Also a lot of tours are done at these islands and hence, they are much more crowded.
The two highlights of this tour for me were- jumping directly from the boat, into the sea at Tup island to snorkel! (again me jumping in after a lot of hesitation) Diving right into the waters to snorkel was an amazing experience and we got to see a lot of colorful fish moving aroung in groups. The secong best thing in this tour was the Poda Island. The Poda Island is beautiful to laze around and has an amazing view, though when we snorkeled there as well, we found no fish.
Overall I would say if you plan to go on the 4 island tour, go by the speed boat or charter a private boat.
Day 3, 4 & 5
Food & Roaming Around!
Hubby Swinging! 😀 @ the Nopparat Thara Beach
We decided we had enough of the tours. I for one, was exhausted and wanted to just roam around the local area. So for the next 3 days, we did just that and I found it to be quite a great experience.
We explored the local food and cheap eats around. We both love discovering different cuisines and avoided eating at any Indian restaurants there.
We wanted to eat the local Thai food and that’s what we did! As vegetarians, it is a tad bit difficult to get vegetarian foodat some places, but not impossible at all. All of the food joints and local places we visited happily served us good vegetarian food on our request. So if you are a vegan/ vegetarian planning to visit Krabi, I would say just request them and they will customize few of their dishes for you.
The best and most amazing type of food we had was the Spicy Papaya salad, Pineapple Rice and Mango Sticky Rice at a restaurant literally called ‘Cheap Cheap’. We had the yummiest Green Curry and Vegetable Fried Rice at a place called ‘May & Zin’ and again some more Mango Sticky Rice at another local hawker place.
Mango Sticky Rice
Pineapple Fried Rice
Spicy Papaya Salad
amazing Green Curry & Vegetable Fried Rice @ May & Zin
We roamed the Ao Nang Night Market, ate twisted potatoes and yummy crepes.
Drank the local coffee which is so strong that it kept me awake and alert and I literally couldn’t sleep, but I just love that type of coffee so couldn’t get enough of it. I would say good tea isn’t widely available in Krabi with the locals prefering coffee over tea so we stuck to the coffee we got. And yes, the local nutella pancakes are just as good as the coffee.
Local Coffee
Local Nutella Pancake
Of course no trip to Thailand can be complete without getting the famous Thai massage done. We we went to three different massage parlors. Dara Massage Parlor, Massage Corner and Leelawadee parlor. My experience was good with 2 of these while one- The Massage Corner was not so good. The lady literally gave me a backache instead of making it feel freer.
So if you are opting to get a massage done, be clear what you want to get done and how.
We roamed at the Noparat thara beach basked in it’s amazing views.
We stayed at two places during the 5 days.
The Green View Village Resort Resort which is a hut style based hotel, which makes you feel like you are literally living among nature. It’s very budget friendly. Breakfast included, great coffee. They have 2 swimming pools.
Breakfast @ Green View Village Resort
2. Ananta Burin Resort which a four star resort. Amazing resort and quite budget friendly as well. They serve a huge spread for breakfast, with a lot of variety of dishes. The swimming pools are amazing and the usp is the water slide for children as well as adults. We had quite an amazing time sliding into the water and swimming in the pool, so much fun!!
Breakfast @ Ananta Burin Resort
Overall, I would say, Thailand and especially Krabi is a great tourist desination. It is quite budget friendly, if you plan your trip in the right matter. The locals there are pretty friendly and polite. They are warm and simple and make you feel welcomed 🙂 I love the locals in Krabi! 🙂
We booked our tours on Klook, which was discovered by my husband. I found the site pretty useful browsing through the tours offered and for booking our tours in advance.
So, we carried back from Krabi lots of memories, photos and quite a lot of sun-tan! I would definitely go back there again if I get the chance to, to experience it’s beauty and calm.
So, I hope you all got an some insight about Krabi and visiting there.
Till the next post,
Dream . Imagine. Be Crazy. Be You.
Update- We are coming up with some interesting recipes and health related articles on the blog. So stay tuned!!
Today, we live in a world who judges us by our superficial appearances. We are constantly shown that being young is beautiful or being fair skinned and slim is.
The society has stereotyped beauty into a superficial skin deep thing. For me, beauty is not just skin deep.
Yes outer beauty is a great thing and it’s a good thing we strive to achieve it and look good.
You, me, everybody!
But for me, it is much more and hence I am writing a poem along the same lines 🙂
Hey! So it’s been a long time since I posted about fashion. If someone had told me few years back that I would be blogging occasionally about this genre, I wouldn’t have believed them. Lol. I am not a fashionista per say, but I believe that a sense of style and clothing goes a long way. So here I am, sharing a few things with all of you, which you can use in your day to day lives.
We all hear the word “Fashion sense” when it comes to clothing and dressing up.
Whether it is celebrities, the media, corporate functions, house parties or traditional gatherings, the word’ Fashion Sense’ crops up everywhere.
me
The thing is, combining outfits and creating a sense of style isn’t really that complicated as it seems. It is mostly about choosing the right colour combination than anything else. Of course accesories play a great role and for women make-up too, but those are secondary.
As the saying goes ‘Clothes maketh a man’ We all can spruce up our wardrobes with a tiny bit of information about mixing colours and using the right colour combination; something that I have realised over a period of time.
Colour Combination is something which we all want to know about, don’t we??
Whether you are a man or a woman, combining colours confuses most of us. Combining the right coloured outfits and teaming them up makes a lot of impact. Afterall, life is nothing without the right colours is it??
A few basic types of colour combinations which we can use in our day to day lives are Monochrome, Complementary, Analogous and Split Complementary
MONOCHROME style is using only a single colour like black, red or anything else.
Black Monochrome (me)
Monochrome
COMPLEMENTARY style basically works on the principle of opposites attract! So just use two contrasting or opposite colour shades. eg- red and green, black and white, dark blue and red etc.
Complementary (opposites)
Analogous (neighbours)
ANALOGOUS style means that neighbours get along well. Which means you can mix two colours who are similar. For eg- deep green and light green or dark pink and lighter shade of pink, blue and violet etc.
SPLIT COMPLEMENTARY style means mixing two analogous colours (neighbours) are mixed with one complementary (opposite) colour to create an enhanced and different look.
Split Complementary
For example pairing a pale blue T-shirt with dark blue jeans and adding an orange scarf for contrast or enhanced style. That’s split complementary for you.
So that was a bit about colour combination..Confused? I hope not! Head to your wardrobe right now and have a look at all those colours in there!
These days, prints are in fashion. Whether they are animal prints or nature prints or just plain design prints, we see them everywhere. In fact, as Indians print and designs in our clothes has always been a part of our wardrobes since generations together.
Double printed outfit. Bright print top and soft design print leggings (me)
Many of us shy away from wearing prints, but I think prints are cool. They give a different, funky and fun look to your outfit.
The basic rule of print is to team a printed top or tee with a plain or monochrome pant or a printed legging or jegging or jeans with a monochrome top or tee. There is no question of mix and match if you are wearing a printed dress (one piece)
If you want to wear both of the outfits in print make sure both of the prints are not loud. One of them is soft print and the other one colourful. I am sure if you stick to this, you can definitely pull off a head to toe print outfit.
Monochrome Top with Printed bottom dhoti harems (me)
So there you are.. That was some information about clothing and colour combination.
She was standing there quietly watching the sea,
As the mischievous wind played with her hair,
It seemed as if she’s thinking of a key
For something as beautiful as,
with her life, her affair
She was beautiful for the way her mind
was engulfed in the waves
Her looks though were run of the mill
Lost in her own thoughts as deep as a cave
Something paramount she was trying to instill
She was beautiful for the way she spoke about her passion
Even for others it may have been out if fashion
But the shimmer in her eyes was inescapable
And in all senses she was truly invincible
She was beautiful because her mind gleamed
And life became a cakewalk even though difficult it seemed
All the backbreaking turned out to be fruitful
and she, in the real sense of the word,
became Bea(YOU)tiful!!
Written and Submitted by Dr. Nikita Prabhu (Physiotherapist)
I hope you all enjoyed this poem shared by her on my blog!
Travel Travel Travel.. If you know me or have read my posts you’d know I have a thing for traveling and do so every once in a while.
A Cupful Of Everything 