Raspberry Pavlova Cupcakes

Tried out a new recipe yesterday for Raspberry Pavlova Cupcakes (inspired by Ruby's delicious pavlovas ... and some raspberries that needed eating up). I made the meringues in advance so that I could crumble some into the cakes - made some with and some without - but there was really no discernable difference in texture, so it probably isn't worth the effort (or waste of meringue!)

For the cakes
120g butter, softened
120g caster sugar
2 large free-range eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
120g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
100g fresh raspberries


For the meringues
2 egg whites
110g caster sugar

To top

150ml double cream

30g icing sugar

3tbspn creme fraiche

Before you start: the meringue mix makes way more than enough mini meringues to top 12 cakes (see photo below), but I just can't really whisk 1 egg white in my massive mixer. By all means try, or omit the meringues all together if you just want a raspberry cupcake. Otherwise the meringues will keep for a couple of weeks in an airtight container and I'm sure they'll come in for something!

Preheat oven to 180c/160fan/350f. Put large cupcake cases in a 12-hole muffin tin.

Usual method for the cake - beat softened butter and sugar together, slowly add beaten egg and vanilla, beat, beat, beat until you can beat no more. Add sifted flour and baking powder and beat quickly, taking care not to overmix. Chuck in the raspberries and give it a quick mix through, leaving some chunky bits of raspberry.

Bake for 20-25 minutes.

While the cakes are cooking start on your meringues.  Line two baking trays with greaseproof or parchment.

Whisk the egg whites until very stiff. Continue whisking on a high speed, slowly adding all of the sugar (a tsp at a time is recommended for the best meringues). The mixture should be smooth and glossy. Pipe small meringue shapes onto the baking trays. These will sit for a little while waiting for the oven to be ready (though maybe don't risk it if it's too hot in the kitchen).

Once your cakes are cooked, reduce oven temperature to 110c/90fan/230f. When the oven is at the right temperature put in your meringues and cook for 45 mins to 1 hour (it's worth turning the trays half way through for a more even bake).

When you're ready to eat your cakes, whip the double cream until firm, beat in the icing sugar. Once well combined, mix in the creme fraiche. Pipe cream mix in a circle on the cakes and top with a meringue.

The meringues will lose their crispiness in 1-2 hours once sat on top of the cream, and the fresh cream won't last long in a warm environment, so this isn't a great recipe for preparing in advance. (nb the cakes will become dry if you put them in the fridge, so I wouldn't choose that option either.) Hey, they'll still be nice to eat!

Cranberry and White Chocolate Muffins

So, I end the year as I began - messing around with white chocolate! I've learned my lesson though and this recipe just calls for chunks of white chocolate and nothing more complicated.... It also uses up those cranberries hanging around after Christmas (use fresh or frozen ones defrosted).

So, you will need:
100g unsalted butter
284ml soured cream (a standard tub)
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
280g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
200g caster sugar (golden if you have it)
150g fresh cranberries (blueberries would also work well)
150g white chocolate, chopped into small chunks

1. Preheat oven to 190c/170c fan/gas 5. Line a 12-hole muffin/large cupcake tin with cases.
2. Melt the butter (in the microwave is fine), leave to cool back down a bit, then mix in the soured cream. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix again, very thoroughly.
3. Mix dry ingredients (flour, baking powder and sugar) together and sift into the butter mixture. Combine well.
4. Add cranberries and white chocolate chunks. Combine thoroughly. The mixture will be quite stiff, this is quite normal!
5. Fill cases - pretty full. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until skewer pulls out clean when poked into your cake.

I read somewhere that muffins are an excuse to eat cake for breakfast. Hurrah for that!

Flavour of the month: Mince pie

This month I have several cupcake flavours on the go including Christmas Cake and Chocolate Yule Log (right), but the official flavour of the month is Mince Pie. I know, you may already be sick of mince pies, but, trust me, this one is delicious!

As it’s the season of giving, here’s the (deceptively simple) recipe.
Basic sponge mix for about 10 cupcakes, so:
2 eggs, beaten
Equal weight of unsalted butter, softened
Equal weight of light muscovado sugar (or caster sugar is fine)
Equal weight of plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
Plus:
1tsp mixed spice
half a jar of mincemeat (about 150g)

Preheat oven to 180/160 fan (or whatever your equivalent is!) and pre-fill a muffin tin with 10-12 muffin/cupcake cases.

Whisk up your softened butter until light and ‘oily’ (the consistency of mayonnaise ish), add the sugar and whisk some more until light and fluffy. Slowly whisk in the eggs, taking care not to add too much egg at once so that the mixture doesn’t split. Sift together your flour, baking powder and mixed spice and whisk into the mix quickly and lightly. Stir in the mincemeat (thoroughly, but don’t bash your cake mixture around too much).

Fill your cupcake cases about two thirds full and bake for 20-25 minutes (until a cake skewer comes out clean). In my oven the cupcakes cook reliably in 22 minutes, but it’s a bit warmer on one side than the other, so I turn them round at 17 minutes. Definitely don’t touch them for 10 minutes (unless something disastrous has happened).

I’ve topped these with a vanilla cream frosting (a mixture of basic buttercream, double cream, condensed milk and vanilla extract), plus a jaunty shortcrust pastry lid or star for the mini ones. The pastry is obviously an optional extra, but gives a nice contrasting crunch to the overall cake. If I was eating these at home, I’d be tempted to serve slightly warm(ed) with a dollop of clotted cream on top.

Have a wonderful festive season!

New flavour: Elderflower

The elderflowers are finally out, which gives me the opportunity to play with another new flavour for June. It's a basic cupcake sponge recipe minus vanilla, which would overpower the elderflower, with elderflower cordial for flavouring. I think this still needs a bit of work - the flavour perhaps too subtle in the sponge? - but the elderflower butter cream is such a pretty pure white!

Blissful Blueberry gets a facelift

I've had a bit of a break from the kitschy kitchen over the past week (except for making a big batch of Caramel Crunch), with a family visit and some time in the garden preparing veg, fruit and flowers for future consumption and cupcake use! No - there isn't a spinach cupcake on the horizon, but some edible flowers (borage) are sprouting, the cherry and apple trees have had a good lot of blossom and the blueberry bush is about to flower....


Which leads me on to a revamped Blissful Blueberry cupcake. I haven't yet decided upon topping, but here's the cake recipe if you fancy a go.

Ingredients:
100g butter, room temperature
200g sugar
100ml maple syrup
2 small eggs, beaten, room temperature (its 3 for 24 cakes, so you ideally want 1.5 but that's not very practical...)
0.5 tsp vanilla extract
180g plain flour, sifted
0.5 tsp baking powder
100ml milk
@150g blueberries

As per usual, preheat oven to 180/350/160 fan and prepare 12-hole muffin tin with large cupcake cases.

Beat the c$%*p out of the butter until smooth and light, add the sugar and beat, beat, beat again. Add the maple syrup and beat some more.
Beat the eggs and vanilla into the mixture a little at a time.

Now, this is a wet cake batter so the flour/baking powder and milk need to be added to the batter alternately a little at a time and mixed in lightly (the time for heavy handed beating is over!). Add roughly a third of the flour and fold until combined. Add half of the milk and mix until combined. Repeat, and then finish with flour and the baking powder (if not already sifted into your flour).

Carefully fold in as many blueberries as you like - I like a lot which for me is roughly three big handfuls.

Get your mix into those cases and pop in the oven for approx 25 mins. The cakes are ready when lightly golden on top and a skewer comes out clean etc etc.

This cake lasts a bit longer in an airtight container than a standard sponge mix, so you can enjoy your blueberry delights for longer!

Flavour of the month: Caramel Crunch

May's flavour of the month is the delightfully sickly Caramel Crunch cupcake. A very moist, lightly caramel flavoured sponge, topped with an American-style brown butter and caramel frosting. Oh my it's sweet, but in a very good way.

I've developed this flavour for my Nanny (ie my grandmother, before you think I'm super-posh and had a nanny as a child...), who is visiting this month with my Mum and Dad - yippee!

A brown butter frosting is an adaptation of a standard butter icing. First melt the butter in a pan until it goes brown and takes on a nutty caramel taste. My recommendation would be use a low-medium heat, and it will take about 5-10 minutes (nb you must strain the melted butter to take out any burnt solids - using a seive was fine enough for my liking, but you might want to use a fine mesh one.) Then simply add sifted icing sugar until you get the right consistency for frosting - swooshing, piping, eating off your finger or whatever. (You'll need roughly 100g of butter and 500-600g icing sugar for 12 large cupcakes.)

You can also add flavouring, but I'd stick to caramel, toffee types of flavours - it would work really well for a maple syrup frosting for example. For this cupcake I included a couple of tablespoons of homemade caramel syrup. Mmmmmm. Shame I've already eaten all the test cakes...

Carrot, Apple, Ginger

Success! After a couple of attempts and some different options (see right in their colour-coded cases), I have fixed upon the final recipe for Carrot, Apple, Ginger.

This one has a lot of ingredients but is actually really easy to make. You basically have some dry ingredients, some fruit ingredients and some wet ingredients. Mix them separately, then mix 'em together!

So, preheat oven to 180C (160C fan; 350F; Gas Mark 4). Prepare your muffin tin with 12 cupcake/muffin cases.

Then, DRY INGREDIENTS:
150g wholemeal flour (sifted)
30g demerara sugar (or caster or muscavado, or even granulated would do, this isn't a dainty, fussy cake)
25g skimmed milk powder
1.5 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp cinnamon
0.5 tsp ground ginger
0.25 tsp salt
Mix these together.

WET INGREDIENTS:
125ml vegetable oil
60ml runny honey
60ml maple syrup
2 eggs
0.5 tsp vanilla extract
Whisk these together.

FRUIT - leave this until last so that your apple doesn't brown while you're doing everything else:
75g carrot, peeled and grated (I think a small grate works best)
75g chopped crystalised ginger (small dice)
1 large apple, peeled and grated
(nb this makes for a very gingery cake - if you want less zing and a bit more sweet, you could replace some of the ginger with chopped dried apple)

The easy bit: add the fruit to the dry and mix it about a bit, but don't fuss too much; add the wet to the dry and fold in. Spoon the mix into 12 cupcake cases (about 3/4 full), and bake for 20-25 mins. nb you might want to turn the heat down 5-10 degrees (C) after about 10 minutes, as it's quite a wet mix and if your oven is too hot it will brown on top before cooked through (but the cakes need the heat to start with).

I'm sure this would also make a great loaf cake, although I'm not sure what timings you'd need. If you experiment - let me know!

Flavour of the month: Introducing Lady Marmalade

April's flavour of the month! Hey sister, go sister, eat sister, cupcake sister!

Now all those chocolate mini eggs are out of the way, it's time to have some fun! This month's flavour is a sponge recipe sent to me by mum, with a kitschy twist of course!

Lady Marmalade is a delicious sponge (a basic vanilla recipe minus vanilla), flavoured with orange marmalade, which makes it extra moist too. I've opted for shredless marmalade in the final recipe as the 'shreds' are quite long and unruly. My tip would be to make sure the mixture hasn't got too wet with the addition of the marmalade - add a bit more flour if necessary. The topping is a standard butter-cream with a healthy dollop (or two) of fine-shred orange marmalade (let the shreds fall where they will in the topping!).

A bit zingy, but still quite sweet and perfect with a nice cup of earl grey tea.

Perhaps next month we'll have the Mocha Chocolata ya ya (whatever that means).

Birthday boy

Sunday was my little bro's birthday and we had a lovely family meet up to celebrate. No birthday would be complete without cupcakes of course, and to satisfy the marzipan monster that is my brother (well, and me actually) I created a retro pink and yellow battenburg cupcake. I think he enjoyed them...

The topping was an experiment - essentially a frangipan, equal quantities of butter, icing sugar and ground almonds, and egg. I used about 75g each of butter, almonds and icing sugar for 12 cupcakes.

Beat the softened butter until smooth and mix in the (sieved) almonds and about half the sugar. Add one egg yolk and cook slowly over a bain marie for about 15 minutes, stirring constantly (until the egg cooked and the almonds no longer taste 'raw'). Leave to cool slightly then add the remainder of the icing sugar a little at a time until you get a consistency you're happy with (for spreading, piping etc).

Victoria's Victoria Sponge

The star cupcake in the ‘Women’s Institute’ Collection I’m creating for this summer’s fetes will have to be the Victoria sponge. I’ve been developing this recipe in honour of our friend Victoria who recently had baby Lucy, hence the double Victorias.

There has been much tinkering with the basic vanilla sponge recipe as this one will really have to stand up on its own and needs to be both light and moist. I think the old trick of weighing your eggs and using equal quantities of butter, sugar and flour has had the best results. As well as good quality vanilla (of course), I think that good quality (well beaten) unsalted butter is a must, but then I do love my butter as anyone who knows me well will testify!

With the sponge is wrapped up I’ve finally Victoria’d it by adding jam inside the sponge and whipped cream on top. Yes, jam in the middle really does work! It’s a bit of a faff as you need to be careful to seal the jam in the sponge mix while also keeping a good amount of cake mix underneath (because it sinks). The first ones I tried were with cherry jam (because the jar was open!), which was fine, but for traditional Victoria Sponge taste, the ones pictured contain raspberry jam. I’m hoping a seedless raspberry jelly may be better behaved and sink less – that and better cream presentation are my next tweaks.

I hope Victoria likes them!

Death by white chocolate: Episode II

Well, Green & Blacks made no difference at all. In fact it split from the butter in the melting stage and was only rescued with some very vigorous whisking (a drop of milk really helped to save this mix). So, tasty and organic it may be, but a solution to the problems of baking with white chocolate it is not.

I've put the goal of a gluten free white chocolate cupcake on hold for now and have started from scratch with a standard white chocolate sponge. This seems to have worked out ok - hurrah! Just as well, as I've had an order being collected this morning...

The recipe is: 125g caster sugar mixed into 125g soft butter, add two eggs and mix until light and fluffy; add 150g well-sieved plain flour and 2 tsp baking powder, plus about 70g grated white chocolate. Leave to sit in the cupcake cups for 20 mins or so before bunging in the oven at 180c for 25 mins (or until golden brown on top). This makes 12 'normal size' cupcakes or about 8 'power' cupcakes! (ie made in a muffin tin, as pictured.)

Death by white chocolate

This weekend I’ll be trying to resolve my current issues with white chocolate cupcakes. I’m advertising these already for Easter, so I’d better make the recipe work somehow!

Essentially I’m adapting a gluten-free chocolate brownie recipe, that I’ve already successfully converted to chocolate cupcakes, but my recent attempts to replicate this in white chocolate was disastrous (although still delicious, said our very polite guests). There was pouf where there shouldn’t have been pouf, and uncooked almond squish in the middle – yuk! In my opinion the only thing it had going for it was the topping.

Anyway, I think I know where it all went wrong, so for round 2 I will be experimenting to find out if Green & Blacks white chocolate, with its minimum 30% cocoa solids, makes a difference to the mix. Already I can report that Tesco white chocolate is much nicer than Sainsbury’s (who’d have thought it) and made a yummy white chocolate topping. Green & Blacks tastes very different to me – it contains real vanilla and tastes, well, of vanilla! So, even if it works in texture it maybe won’t taste of white chocolate. Oh what to do?

If anyone has any top tips for perfect white chocolate cupcakes, please let me know…