Passion Fruit Curd Mother's Day Cupcakes

I made these cupcakes for Mother’s Day for my mum, my mother-in-law - and me!

I’ve developed quite a taste for passion fruit recently - Passoa passion fruit liqueur is delicious and could definitely be used in baking, but since my four year old daughter was going to have these cupcakes as well I wasn’t going to use alcohol. Instead, I got the passionfruit flavour from a combination of yogurt - papaya, passion fruit and mango flavour, from Morrisons - and passion fruit curd (The Cherry Tree brand, from Ocado).

I wanted a light cupcake using yogurt in the cake mix and these were so light and airy, they probably aren’t robust enough to put a spoonful of curd into the middle but I did anyway (it just makes them a bit messy when you eat them!).

Here is the recipe I used:

125g margarine or butter, softened

150g sugar

2 eggs

150ml yogurt - I used papaya, passion fruit and mango flavour from Morrison's 

225g self-raising flour

1 heaped tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

For the filling:

Passionfruit curd - I used the Cherry Tree brand from Ocado

For the icing:

500g icing sugar

250g butter, softened

Passionfruit flavouring to taste - for example you could add a spoonful of the passionfruit curd, or passionfruit liqueur if the cakes are for adults.

Preheat oven to 180C. Cream the butter and the sugar then beat in the eggs, one at a time. Stir in the yogurt, then fold in the flour, baking powder and salt.

Spoon into cupcake cases and bake for around 15-20 minutes depending on the size until the tops are golden brown.

Allow to cool, then using a teaspoon make a small well in each cupcake and add a spoonful of passionfruit curd.

To make the buttercream, cream together the butter and icing sugar and add a spoonful of passionfruit curd, or a few drops of passionfruit liqueur if for adults only - you may need to adjust the quantity of icing sugar if the mixture is too runny.

Using a piping bag and a nozzle, pipe swirls onto the top of the cupcakes. 

I decorated these cupcakes in different ways:

SuckUK customisable cookie stamp - this is a wooden stamp that comes with a plastic disc and little letters, that you insert into the disc to make the message of your choice. You can stamp this onto a cookie before it has baked, or stamp onto a circle of fondant icing, as I did here. I've had this piece of equipment for ages but this was the first time I had used it.

It was quite fiddly to get the letters into the right places, and took a bit of trial and error to work out if they were all the right way around; there isn't a huge amount of space for a message but I managed to get 'happy' across the top, 'mothers' day along the bottom and 'day' in the middle. However, there was only one of most letters and not enough to spell out 'happy' for instance as there was only one 'p', so I had to stamp the missing letter separately. It didn't quite look the same and I was surprised given that 'happy birthday' would be, to me, the most obvious message to use on the cookie stamp that there weren't enough letters to make it! Then I piped some small buttercream flowers around the edge.

Wilton Make Any Message Letterpress Set - this was also something I received as a gift several years ago. The letters are bigger than on the SukUK stamp so I just pressed 'mum' into a circle of fondant icing and placed it on top of each cupcake with a little buttercream. Then I piped some buttercream flowers along the top and bottom.

Piped flowers: I used two different colours of buttercream (pink and purple, though the latter looks a bit grey in this photo), and two different nozzles to pipe a swirl and some smaller flowers onto each cupcake and added some edible silver balls on top.

Reindeer cupcakes with pretzel antlers

I really wanted to make some time to do some Christmas baking when I had a day off last week as in the past I would have made several festive treats by now and I hadn’t done anything yet! 

These reindeer cupcakes are really easy, the key ingredient is the pretzels - and you can make the cakes themselves any flavour you like!

I made chocolate cakes using this recipe on the BBC Good Food site and made a simple chocolate buttercream.

When the cakes were baked and cooled I topped with a spoonful of buttercream and used salted caramel flavour chocolate coated pretzels (made by Flipz, available in most supermarkets) for the reindeer’s antlers. You can use regular pretzels as well but I thought these went better with the cake!

For the face you can use a Smartie or M&M for the nose but I didn’t have any and these were a spur of the moment bake so I used some icing I had coloured red and used a little piping bag to pipe on the rest of the face. Some of the reindeer have slightly odd expressions but my daughter liked them and so did my husband!

Caramel Cupcakes with a Hidden Centre

 I’m a bit of a mad cat lady (and proud) even though I only have one cat. So when I saw the local cat rescue was having an open day, I definitely wanted to go. It’s a private rescue run by one amazing lady out of her house – she finds fosterers and new homes for rescued kitties and also keeps several herself, including ones who are too traumatised to be rehomed elsewhere after they are rescued. The first time I went there, for a bric-a-brac sale she was doing to raise money, she told me she had 11 cats currently living there!

 

This time, as well as stalls selling everything from cat toys to CDs, a raffle and tombola and various cats wandering around, there were refreshments and I’d offered to bring some cakes. I really wanted to decorate cupcakes to look like cats, along the lines of the ones in Hello, Cupcake, but just knew I wouldn’t have time for fiddling around.

 

I decided instead to make something I thought would have mass appeal – and have the added benefit of using up an open tin of Carnation caramel in the fridge. Caramel cupcakes are easy and always popular, especially when they had a hidden centre.

 

I used a simple, fairly basic cupcake recipe for the cake itself, using brown sugar as well as caster sugar to give a more caramel flavour, but to let the caramel flavour really be driven by the hidden centre and the icing. Here’s what I did

 

Caramel cupcakes – an original recipe by Caroline Makes

 

For the cupcakes (makes about 12)

150g butter or margarine, softened

75g caster sugar

75g light brown sugar

2 eggs

150g self-raising flour

 

For the filling:

397g tin Carnation Caramel

 

For the buttercream:

The rest of the Carnation Caramel

150g butter or marg, softened

300g icing sugar

 

Preheat oven to 180C and line a muffin tin with cupcake liners.

 

 

Cream the butter and both the sugars then beat in the eggs. Fold in the flour, and spoon into the cupcake cases.

 

Bake the cupcakes in the oven for 15-20 minutes until golden brown and spongy to the touch, but test with a skewer to make sure they are not raw in the middle.

 

 

Allow the cupcakes to cool, first in the tin then on a baking rack.

 

 

When the cakes have cooled, use a teaspoon to remove a small piece from the centre of each cupcake, setting the piece you have removed to one side. Place half a teaspoon (or more depending on the size of the hole you have made) of Carnation Caramel into the hole in the cupcake and replace the piece you have removed on top. It won’t sit flat and will be slightly higher than the top of the cake.

 

To make the buttercream, sift the icing sugar over the butter or marg and gently cream together. Add a few spoonfuls of the Carnation Caramel to taste, making sure the buttercream doesn’t become runny as you will need to be able to pipe it.

 

Fit a piping bag with a star nozzle or your favourite nozzle, fill with buttercream and pipe swirls onto the top of each cupcake. I decorated mine with silver chocolate balls though in retrospect they would have looked better with gold!

 

Either way they seemed to go down well at the cat rescue open day, and I came home with a box of notelets I’d bought, a teddy bear I’d won in a teddy tombola (where every ticket won a cuddly toy) and a Wet Wet Wet CD from 1992 I won in another tombola!

I'm sharing these with Treat Petite, hosted by Kat the Baking Explorer.
 

 

Coffee Cupcakes with Chocolate-Covered Coffee Beans

Coffee is not one of my favourite flavours; I generally dislike coffee cake and I don't drink coffee apart from on rare occasions. But in the hot weather we had recently I started craving iced coffee and even went to Starbucks for a Frappucino one time, something I haven't done in years.

How do I get from that to cake? Well, I found out at short notice that the front-of-house team were holding a bake sale in the lobby of my work building for Battersea Cats and Dogs Home. I love baking and I love cats (dogs too, but cats more!) so I wanted to lend a hand.

I needed to bake something that wouldn't take too long, that had ingredients I already had in the house, but also a cake that would last well in the heat and be something to tempt people on a hot summer's day.

 

I had a packet of chocolate-covered coffee beans in the cupboard from a recent Degustabox which I thought would be great on the top of cupcakes - which then had to be coffee.

I used a recipe from 'Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery' though I switched out the espresso powder as I didn't have any, for some strong coffee made from instant granules; I also used the same brown sugar rather than splitting the quantities between demerara and light brown sugar as advised. This is what I did:

Makes about a dozen cupcakes:
110g butter, softened, or margarine
130g light brown sugar
2 eggs
120g self-raising flour
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
50ml strong coffee
75ml semi-skimmed milk, at room temperature

to decorate:
150g butter, softened, or margarine
350g icing sugar
1 tbsp. strong coffee made from instant granules
chocolate-covered coffee beans to decorate

Preheat the oven to 180C or 160C fan. Cream together the butter and the sugar and mix in the eggs. Fold in the flour, vanilla, coffee and milk and combine until thoroughly mixed.

Spoon the mixture into cupcake cases in a muffin or cupcake tin and bake in the oven for 25 minutes. Allow to cool on a cooling rack.

To make the buttercream beat the butter with the icing sugar and mix in the coffee. Spread on top of the cooled cupcakes and swirl with a flat palette knife; place a couple of chocolate-covered coffee beans on top of each cupcake.

 

I'm sending this to Treat Petite hosted by Kat at Baking Explorer

Mini S'more Brownie Cupcakes with Cadbury Creme Eggs

I now have an answer to the question from the famous Cadbury Creme Egg advert: how do you eat yours? I like mine crushed up on top of toasted marshmallow and chocolate brownies!

Cadbury sent me several packets of Creme Eggs, an apron and some recipe cards, and asked me to recreate some of their recipes. One was based around a banana split and neither my husband nor I like bananas, but my eye was immediately caught by these.



They have a chocolate brownie base, which is baked into a cupcake case; you spoon marshmallow fluff (which you can buy in a tub from most large supermarkets) on top of the raw brownie mixture and bake it in the oven shortly. Then top them off with some crushed up some Cadbury Creme Eggs.


Not only are these easy to make but they taste absolutely delicious. The brownie is rich and chocolatey, and the toasted marshmallow is chewy and delicious, and the Creme Egg on top gives you alternative bites of chunks of chocolate and the creamy sugary filling. I was really pleased with how these turned out!

Cadbury's recipe is below; I got 8 out of these using large cupcake cases, so didn't use the whole jar of marshmallow fluff and used half a Crème Egg to top each one rather than a whole one.

You need:
125g dark chocolate
100g unsalted butter
125g light muscovado sugar
2 large free-range eggs
75g plain flour, sifted
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 tub of marshmallow fluff (you will have some left over)
12 Cadbury Creme Eggs, crushed

Heat the oven to 180C, 160C fan, 350F, Gas 4. Melt the chocolate and butter together in a large saucepan over a low heat. When completely melted, stir in the sugar, then the eggs one by one.

 

Fold in the flour and salt, and then spoon into the cupcake cases so they are nearly full.

 

Pipe the fluff onto each cupcake and bake in the centre of the oven for 12 minutes.

 

Leave to cool and add the crushed Creme Eggs on top.

I was amazed at how the marshmallow fluff rose and set like meringue - I wasn't expecting to do that at all!

 

 

 Here are some of the results!

 

Thanks to Cadbury who sent me the Creme Eggs, apron and a Sainsbury's voucher to buy the other ingredients

 

Gingerbread Cupcakes and My Cupcake Toppers

As I mentioned when I posted about my Christmas cake, I was sent a selection of cupcake toppers from My Cupcake Toppers for review. You can order icing or rice paper toppers with pictures of anything from Christmas to Eid to baby shower, Disney princesses or football teams or even Breaking Bad, the TV show. Prices start at £1.20 for 12 standard rice paper cupcake toppers up to £6 for ones made of icing. As well as that, you can design your own for a bargain price of £2.70 for the smallest size - that's actually a very appealing idea! They even have an in-house design service if you are short of inspiration.

I decided to order a selection to try out the different rice papers and icing they are printed on. As you might have seen, I ordered a large 7.5 inch circular cake topper printed onto a thin sheet of edible icing, to go on top of my Christmas cake. I cut it out, removed the plastic backing and simply placed it on top of the cake - perfect!

I then ordered a set of 12 Christmas designs for cupcakes made of icing, plus some Family Guy toppers (I love that show) on premium rice paper, and some Lego Star Wars on regular rice paper. In both cases the rice paper was pre-cut which only costs a fraction more, but gives a much more professional finish than taking a pair of scissors to a sheet of rice paper yourself.

Did you know the reason why rice paper toppers sometimes curl up when you put them on cupcakes? It's to do with the moisture in the icing, so you are better off waiting until the icing has hardened but is still ever so slightly soft, so you can press on the topper.

What's interesting though that is when I (*accidentally* - ahem) put the rice paper toppers on while the icing was still too wet, the standard rice paper topper did curl at the edges while the premium topper - which is noticeably thicker - didn't.

 

I was then able to flatten the Lego Star Wars topper when the icing had set a bit. Both toppers were larger than I was expecting and worked really nicely, and didn't taste of a lot but I wasn't expecting them to!

 

The Lego Star Wars cupcake is just the thing to eat when you are opening the next window on your Lego Star Wars advent calendar!

Finally I had some trouble when it came to the icing toppers. The icing discs were printed on a plastic sheet but unlike with the large cake topper I couldn't peel off the backing plastic. I spent ages picking at the edges wondering why they weren't coming off, then decided to contact the company. The My Cupcake Toppers website advises contacting them via Facebook which I did and I was pleasantly surprised - given it was in the evening - to have a reply just a couple of minutes later.

They told me what to do and also informed me that the instructions were on their website and on the back of the delivery note. I had already looked at the FAQ on their website and went to the 'cutting' section but this is about buying the topper discs cut out already; I totally missed the 'instructions' section further down, and I would never have thought to take the address label off the front of the envelope and check for something printed on the back!

The instructions, once I had them, were easy to follow even if they did surprise me, as I've never done this before. You need to dry them out in a cool oven (50-60 degrees C) for 5-10 minutes and they will peel off.

I really liked these because they stay stiff and flat and look really professional. They are quite big, taste nicer than the rice paper and I really liked the set of Christmas designs that I chose.

So here is the recipe for the gingerbread cupcakes themselves, which comes from a book called Celebration Cupcakes, byTamara Jane.

To make about 18-20 large cupcakes, you need:
300g plain flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp mixed spice
150g butter, softened
400g caster sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
100g finely chopped crystallised ginger
160ml sour cream

For the buttercream:
250g butter, softened
500g icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence


Preheat oven to 170C, place cupcake cases in two muffin tins.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, ground ginger and mixed spice.

In another bowl cream the butter and the sugar and mix in the sugar. Beat until light and fluffy.

Add the eggs, beating the mixture after you add each one, then fold in half the dry ingredient, half the chopped ginger and sour cream, and mix well. Then fold in the rest of the flour, ginger and cream.

Spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases and bake for 20 minutes. Allow to cool.

To make the buttercream, beat the butter and the icing sugar. Add the vanilla essence and mix in. Using a piping bag and a star nozzle, pipe swirls onto the top of the cupcakes. Top with cupcake toppers as shown if desired.

 



 

I'm sharing these with Treat Petite, hosted by Kat, the Baking Explorer, and Cakeyboi Stuart.

 

 

Thanks to My Cupcake Toppers for the products to review.

Jammie Dodger Cupcakes

We had a bake sale for Macmillan at work recently and even though I wasn't going to be in the office that day, I wanted to take part. I decided to make cupcakes as I was going to have to do them mid-week after work, and I don't get home that early thanks to a long commute.

When there is a lot of choice in a bake sale, the things that go first tend to be the more indulgent-looking or more unusual. I remembered ages ago seeing some Jammie Dodger cupcakes online and knew there was a recipe in the Hummingbird Bakery book .

The recipe in the  book explains how to make your own Jammie Dodger-style biscuits, which might be a fun thing to do one day, but I didn’t have time for that, so I bought a packet of mini Jammie Dodgers to use on top of the cupcakes. I remembered how good my cupcakes were that have an Oreo biscuit base and a Jaffa Cake base and decided to use a full-size Jammie Dodger in the base, before the batter was cooked, and also add a spoonful of jam in the middle of the cake after it was baked, which isn’t part of the recipe and is my own adaptation.

 

 

Here’s what I did

Makes around 15 cupcakes

 

For the cake:

15 Jammie Dodger biscuits

70g butter, softened

210g plain flour

250g caster sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

210ml whole milk

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

15 tsp strawberry jam (about 200g)

 

 

For the frosting:

15 mini Jammie Dodgers

500g icing sugar, sifted

250g butter, softened

 

Preheat oven to 180C.

 

Mix the flour, butter, sugar, baking powder and salt with an electric mixer. Normally I would cream the butter and sugar first then add the eggs; this way gives you a breadcrumb-like texture which I think gives a more biscuity-flavour somehow, which is just right for this recipe.

 

Pour the milk into a jug and beat in the eggs and vanilla, and gradually pour the liquid into the dry ingredients, mixing slowly as you go. Increase the speed of the mixer until you have a smooth batter.

 

 

Line a cupcake or muffin tin with large cupcake cases. Place a Jammie Dodger – with the heart facing up – in the bottom of each cake case, then spoon the cake batter on top until the cake cases are almost full. Bake for 20-25 minutes then leave to cool.

 

 

When the cakes have cooled, use a teaspoon to remove a little of the centre of the cake, retaining the part you removed in one piece. Add a teaspoon of strawberry jam to each cupcake, and replace the 'lid'.

 

 

 

To make the icing, beat the icing sugar and buttercream until smooth. I had intended to pipe swirls onto the cupcakes but ran out of icing (I thought I had more but didn’t!) so ended up spreading it on top to make it go further. Top with a mini Jammie Dodger.

 

 

I'm sharing these with Charlotte's Lively Kitchen as she runs the Food Calendar challenge, and this month was the Macmillan Big Coffee Morning.

 

 

Blueberry Compote Cupcakes

 

While I was in the middle of Sugar-Free September I wanted to make a cake to take into the design agency I work with as I was spending a day working with them. I always take cake and didn't want them to miss out just because I wasn't eating sweet treats, so I had a good idea: to make a cake I didn't like and wouldn't eat!

I had some blueberries in the freezer that I'd been given and I don't really like blueberries (even in muffins). I've got a gorgeous-looking recipe book I've hardly used, called Cox Cookies & Cake - it was a pop-up (or in any case relatively short-lived) bakery in London's Soho that was a collaboration between baker Eric Lanlard and fashion designer Patrick Cox, that had very glamorous, decadent - and sometimes slightly naughty (cupcake toppers of topless men or showgirl legs) treats. I remember fondly going there with a friend while we were shopping in Soho for Halloween party costumes a few years ago.

Reminiscing aside, the book had a recipe for blueberry compote cupcakes, which looked perfect. I made the blueberry compote from scratch and used it to fill the middle of the cakes before they were baked - which was a bit unusual as normally I'd add a jam filling after the cakes were baked, but this seemed to work really well - not that I actually tried one, but I had very good feedback from the team!

To make 12 cupcakes, you need:
2 eggs
200g caster sugar
125ml sunflower oil
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
250g plain flour
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
250ml soured cream

for the blueberry frosting;
150g blueberries
50g caster sugar

for the buttercream:
250g butter, softened
500g icing sugar
2 tbsp. milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
and I added a few drops of blue food colouring as well

 

Make the blueberry compote first; I actually did this the day before. Heat the blueberries and sugar in a saucepan, over a low heat and stirring well, until the sugar has dissolved and the blueberries softened. I let mine cool and put in a container with a lid in the fridge overnight.

Preheat oven to 200C/ 180C fan. Beat the eggs and the sugar and gradually pour in the oil, mixing well. Add the vanilla extract, then fold in the flour, salt and baking powder. Stir in the soured cream.

Put paper cake cases into a muffin tin and put one large tablespoon of the cake mixture into each cake case then put 1 tsp of the compote on top.

Fill the rest of the paper case until 2/3 full with the rest of the cake mixture.

Bake in the oven for 25 minutes and allow to cool.

Beat the butter with the icing sugar and add the other ingredients; using a piping bag with a small star nozzle, pipe the buttercream onto the top of the cupcakes.

I'm sharing these with Treat Petite, hosted by Stuart at Cakeyboi and Kat the Baking Explorer.

Tiramisu Cupcakes - coffee cakes for people who don't like coffee

These cupcakes taste just like the real thing - like you are eating tiramisu!

I made them for a family party with my in-laws; my mother-in-law and husband both love coffee cake but I really don't like it. I wondered if there was a way I could incorporate coffee into a cake so it would still be enjoyed by someone who doesn't like coffee; I've got a great recipe for chocolate cake that uses coffee as one of the ingredients to give depth of flavour but it doesn't actually taste of coffee at all. Then I remembered a dessert that I love, that uses coffee - tiramisu!

The Marks & Spencer recipe book 'Easy Cupcakes' has some really imaginative recipes - it's a very good little book that I've had for about five years but only used a handful of times. It has a recipe for tiramisu cupcakes - in true Caroline style, I didn't read the ingredients list properly and was half way through before I remembered I didn't have any masala or sweet sherry, but I did have crème de cacao and this worked perfectly. Here's what you need to do: the recipe says this makes 12 but I only got 8 (large) cupcakes out of it.

You need:
115g unsalted butter or baking spread like Stork
115g light brown sugar
2 eggs
115g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp coffee granules
25g icing sugar
4 tbsp. water
for the frosting:
225g mascarpone cheese
85g caster sugar
2 tbsp. marsala or sweet sherry, or in my case crème de cacao
cocoa for dusting

Preheat oven to 180C. Beat the butter, sugar, eggs, flour and baking powder in a bowl until smooth and creamy and spoon into paper cup cases in a muffin tin.

Bake for 15-20 minutes until risen and firm to the touch.

Place the coffee granules, icing sugar and water in a pan and heat gently until the coffee and icing sugar have dissolved. Boil for one minute then allow to cool.

Brush the coffee syrup over the top of each cupcake while the cupcakes are still warm. Then leave the cakes to cool.

For the frosting, beat the mascarpone, icing sugar and masala in a bowl and spread on top of the cupcakes. Sprinkle with a pinch of cocoa powder.

These cupcakes tasted gorgeous - just like eating tiramisu!

I'm sharing these with Treat Petite, hosted by Kat at the Baking Explorer and Stuart at Cakeyboi.

 

Charlotte at Charlotte's Lively Kitchen runs a blog challenge called the Food Calendar and there are several things happening this month that these cupcakes would be great for, including National Cupcake Week from Sept 12-18, International Coffee Day and the Macmillan Coffee Morning.