Things I've Deemed More Important Than Homework

What are these?

These, my friend, are Mycroft Cupcakes.  Their flavor is inspired by the fabulous Mycroft Tea blended by the lovely areyoutryingtodeduceme.  

And yes, you read that right, they’re inspired by, but not made with the tea.  Why is this you ask? Well, there are two reasons:

1. Before I bought the tea, I read a bunch of the reviews for it, and a whole bunch of them mentioned it tasting like cake.  When I got it, it didn’t seem to taste like any cake I had ever eaten, and I wanted desperately to remedy this.  
2. I was running super, super low on the tea itself. 

So, I sought to create a cupcake that would taste as much like my favorite tea as possible.  Here is the resulting recipe:

(warning: the spices are all in weird amounts because I spent a lot of time noodling around trying to get the amounts right and ended up with some strange measurements)

Cupcakes:

cake recipe adapted from Simple White Cake

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup butter

2 eggs (make sure they’re room temperature, just trust me)

4 tsp Vanilla

1 1/2 cups flour

1 3/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup milk (buttermilk if you’ve got it)

1 1/2 + 1/8 tsp ground cloves

1/2 Tsp + 1/8 tsp ginger

heaping 1/4 tsp cardamom

heaping 1/4 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp cocoa powder

1. Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees and line a muffin pan with paper liners
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together butter and sugar
3. Beat in eggs one at a time (really give those babies time to whip up) then stir in vanilla
4. In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients
5. While mixing on low speed, alternate adding dry ingredients and milk in about three batches, and mix until batter is smooth (it should look a lot like cool whip, only yellow)
6. Spoon into prepared pan and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean

Frosting

(note: normally I’m super against using boxed mixes for home baking, but this stuff is just way too good for me to ignore.  also this recipe makes way more than you need, so you can scale it down, but really, why keep a half a package of pudding around?)

1 package instant vanilla pudding

2 cups heavy cream

1. Whip that shit together and try not to eat it before it reaches the cupcakes

Chocolate Ganache

1/2 cup heavy cream

4 1/2 oz. chocolate of your choice (I use semisweet)

1. heat heavy cream until steaming, then mix in chocolate until smooth

To assemble:

1. drizzle thoroughly cooled ganache onto thoroughly cooled cupcakes
2. pipe or spoon frosting on top of ganache
3. ok, the toppers were just chocolate medallions that I made while trying to learn to temper chocolate, but I recommend just using something easier like chocolate chips
4. now throw on your BBC sherlock DVD or curl up with your favorite original Conan Doyle story, and enjoy!

(whew! sorry, I suck at writing recipes! feel free to drop me any questions and/or suggestions you have for this recipe)

Sooooooo … . I was taking drawing requests from friends and someone asked for this.  I … I can’t tell if I’m ok with my life choices right now.

In any case, here he is, The Cumbertone Baby,

This is just a sketch, but hopefully I’ll get around to coloring him soon.  So you should, you know, follow me if you like it … or something

Sherlock and John.

aw yeah.

geothebio:

piccie:

@Markgatiss Benedict Cumberbatch has done fab “Sherlock” canvas in aid of Willow Foundation.

He draws too? Some men do have it all…

WHAT BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH CAN DRAW

NO BENEDICT YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED.  THAT’S TOO MUCH. YOU’RE NOT REAL.