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.

Mums Are Like Buttons Box Frame with Buttons - Mother's Day Gift

I've been seeing the phrase 'mums are like buttons' everywhere recently - or at least in the run up to Mothers' Day, which in the UK was March 26 this year (it falls later in the year in other countries including the US).

The whole of that phrase is 'Mums are like buttons - they hold everything together'. I thought that sounded lovely and wanted to make my mum a Mothers' Day card with it on. In fact it started out as a card and turned into a gift!

I tracked down a rubber stamp with that exact sentiment which I stamped onto a square white card blank, and using glue dots stuck buttons in various shades of red and pink around it. I realised afterwards the quote was slightly off centre which was a shame but I'm sure my mum didn't mind too much.

The card looked too heavy with the buttons and I wanted it to be more of a keepsake, so I decided to make it into a framed picture instead.

The box frames sold in Hobbycraft are brilliant for this sort of thing and they are often in half price sales where you can get the smallest size for as little as 2 pounds, so I tend to stock up on a couple every now and then.

The frame made the perfect setting for my Mothers' Day gift.

I'm sharing this with the Addicted to Stamps challenge and Fab Funky Challenges

Mother of the Bride and Groom Decorated Notebooks

These notebooks are a lovely gift for a mother of the bride or mother of the groom – they can use them for wedding planning notes and ideas.

 

 

I’d been thinking about decorating notebooks as gifts for a while but hadn’t gotten around to it, then when I got engaged – and was seeing my mum the following weekend, I thought it would be a really nice thing to do.

 

I had a small square notebook that was perfect – it had blank pages and a stiff, plain cover. I got it from Tiger for I think only £2 or £3 (I love that shop!).

 

I wanted the notebook to say ‘mother of the bride’ as I thought my mum might enjoy getting it out of her handbag in shops or at wedding fairs and letting people see the cover. I imagine she’s relieved that at the age of 36 one of her daughters is finally getting married!

 

I found the perfect die-cut on Ebay that was made of thick cardboard so all I did was stick that on and let the words take centre stage. I decided it did need something else so found a cream die cut heart in my card stash. I added a few hearts and flowers stickers around the edge as well.

 

I found the ‘mother of the groom’ notebook a bit harder but did want to make one for her as well. I spent ages looking online for a sticker or die cut with the correct words but couldn’t find anything.

 

 

In the end the only thing I was able to get were the words spelled out in diamante (luckily that’s more her style than my mum’s) for ironing onto clothes. I decided to give it a go anyway and covered a larger but thinner notebook with thick purple paper, and ironed the letters on. It worked!

I stuck a heart print ribbon strip along the top and bottom of the notebook and added some silver outline stickers from a wedding sheet, of champagne glasses, hearts and a lucky horseshoe.