Last Wednesday I saw a retweeted tweet asking for bloggers to volunteer to test some products for a new company – Sugar and Crumbs – so I happily got in touch and was sent a bag of goodies to try out!
Sugar and Crumbs produce a range of naturally flavoured unsweetened icing sugars (24!) and cocoa powders (5) which can be used as a direct replacement for traditional unflavoured icing sugars and cocoa powders when baking cupcakes, brownies and other cakes to give an added depth of flavour. I’m really lazy in developing any exciting flavour combinations when I bake cupcakes – I tend to stick to vanilla, lemon or chocolate, so I was really excited to see what flavours I received.
My goodies arrived very quickly (on Saturday morning!) and included:
- 1 x 125g pouch of Chocolate Coconut cocoa powder
- 1 x 250g pouch of Chilli Lime icing sugar
- 1 x 125g pouch of Lemon Drizzle icing sugar
- 1 x 125g pouch of White Chocolate icing sugar
As well as sample recipes for a simple cupcake mix and buttercream icing – which all came packaged in a Sugar and Crumbs tote bag – a Sugar and Crumbs cupcake magnet was also included! I really liked the branding and the cupcake logos which were embedded onto all the pouches too. All of the flavours were clearly marked on each pouch.
I was going to a house warming party on the Saturday night, so decided to bake up a batch of cupcakes to take with me. I baked a Chocolate Coconut cupcake using the cocoa powder and then used the White Chocolate icing sugar to whip up a buttercream topping. On opening the cocoa powder there was this wonderful coconutty aroma – it was strong but not too sweet or overpowering so I could tell it was going to be a good addition to the recipe!
I followed the recipe provided and found this very easy to use. I noticed that as I was adding the cocoa powder and milk, the mixture seemed very smooth and light to mix (a bit smoother and lighter than my usual cupcake mix recipe!).
The recipe instructed a bake of 15-20 minutes at 180c/Gas 4. There was no fan oven temp suggested (I think it’s normally 20 degrees lower) so I just baked as the recipe stated at 180c and the cupcakes were done at exactly at 15 minutes. As I got them out onto the wire rack to cool they felt super light and were a rich dark brown colour.
As the cakes were cooling I then moved on to making the buttercream icing. I used a combination of icing sugar – the full 125g sample of white chocolate flavoured icing sugar, and approximately 4 dessert spoons of Silver Spoon icing sugar to make it to the right buttercream consistency. One thing that I did think would be a handy addition to the recipe would be stating how much buttercream would adequately ice 12 cupcakes/1 large cake as that wasn’t stated – maybe in a table form would be good, so if you were needing to make a big batch of cupcakes then you would how much buttercream to make. I found that approx 170g icing sugar and 62g butter made enough to do this nicely. I noticed that the buttercream had a really nice gloss to it, and smelled great too! Then it was just a case of adding my decoration. I grated some good quality dark chocolate and sprinked some white chocolate chocolate chips on top, and they were off to the party (apart from 2, which were used as quality tasters/models for the photos 🙂
I LOVED the cupcake – the coconut flavour cake and the white chocolate buttercream complimented each other perfectly, and gave a depth of flavour that I just don’t think that you could get any other way! My next batch will be the coconut cake with the chilli lime buttercream. I’ll be definitely recommending these products to my baking friends too. I’ve taken a peek at the website too and there’s some great flavour combinations – including Blueberry and Key Lime icing sugars, as well as some limited edition Christmas flavourings which I’m really tempted to buy! Well done Sugar and Crumbs for a really well designed website and good quality products!
I was sent these products to review by Sugar and Crumbs, free of charge. My review is completely impartial and 100% my own opinions.
Mess in the Ness 
These look great! Gutted I missed that tweet now! Really helpful review too 🙂
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