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.

Easter Meringue Nest with Passion fruit Coulis and Cadbury Creme Egg

Passion fruit - indeed fruit of any kind - and Cadbury Creme Egg are two things that I wouldn't have thought particularly go together, but I have been proven wrong.


Cadbury sent me several Creme Eggs just in time for Easter, along with four recipes where they have teamed up with the Rinkoff bakery. I already made these mini s'more brownie cupcakes with Cadbury Creme Eggs which were really good, and I mean really good.


On Easter Sunday I had my mother- and father-in-law over for lunch and cooked a delicious roast lamb... plus chicken for my husband as he doesn't eat lamb, and butternut squash for my mother-in-law who is vegetarian. So with all that, I needed an easy dessert!


The Cadbury/Rinkoff recipe for meringue nests with passion fruit coulis and Cadbury Creme Egg was just the thing as I could prepare most of it in advance. This is the recipe - I will explain afterwards a few tweaks I made. The recipe below says it makes eight meringue nests but they would be pretty small I think as I had to double the quantity of ingredients to make eight.


You need:
For the meringue:
2 large egg whites at room temperature
100g caster sugar


For the passion fruit coulis:
250ml passion fruit puree (thaw if frozen)
240g sugar


For the ganache:
5 Cadbury Creme Eggs, melted
100g butter
8 Cadbury Creme Eggs, cut into small pieces


Method
For the meringue:
Pre-heat your oven to 120C. Put the egg whites into a large clean bowl and whisk on a medium speed. Keep whisking until they form stiff peaks.


Add the 100g caster sugar a tablespoon at a time and whisk until combined. The meringue should be nice and glossy.


Line a flat baking tray with greaseproof paper or a non-stick baking sheet. If necessary use a bit of butter to make it stick to the tray.


Place a star nozzle into a piping bag and spoon in the meringue. Start by piping a dot in the centre of your meringue nest then in one continuous motion go around the dot twice to make a bigger circle, then go round again on top of the outer circle to make the sides. Repeat until you've piped all nests.

NB The recipe didn't state the cooking time so this is what worked for me Place the baking sheet into the pre-heated oven and bake for one hour until the meringues are crisp. Remove from the oven and allow to cool before removing from the greaseproof paper and baking sheet.

For the passion fruit coulis:
In a medium-sized saucepan mix the passion fruit and sugar together. Bring to the boil on a medium heat and simmer for 3-5 minutes. Put aside to cool.

For the ganache:

In a saucepan heat up a small amount of water and place a glass bowl on top (like a bain marie). Place 4 Cadbury Creme Eggs (yes I know the ingredients list says 5.... perhaps they expect you to eat one while cooking) and butter in a glass bowl and stir until all the ingredients have melted (this should take approximately four or five minutes). The mixture should have a slight gloss and be quite runny.

Leave to cool for a minute or two. Drizzle the ganache and coulis over the nest and top with broken pieces of Cadbury Creme Egg.

Here are my tweaks:

• I doubled the quantity so each person had two meringues
• I couldn't find my star piping nozzle so the sides of the meringue are smooth, which doesn't look as good
• I actually forgot to build up the sides of the meringues so they are flat which isn't as good either!
• The recipe didn't give a cooking time, I recommend one hour
• Instead of making the fruit coulis, as I couldn't find passion fruit puree, I bought Sainsbury's mango and passion fruit coulis and used that in the recipe
• I layered two meringue nests with passion fruit coulis and Creme Egg ganache, then put half a crushed Creme Egg on top of each portion, so using six Creme Eggs in total.

The chocolate and fruit flavours went together surprisingly well, and I loved the chewy meringue and the smooth chocolate. This made a really good Easter dessert!

Mango, Papaya & Passionfruit Yogurt Gluten-Free Cookies

I like to bake things to take into work but we are a pretty small team which, combined with the fact that I’m on a pre-wedding diet, means I’m not really making a lot of cakes for work. But recently I’ve heard a few people say they must remember to buy some biscuits to bring in or something so I thought it was a good excuse to bake. I remembered at 10pm one evening that we had a team meeting the next day so decided to do something very quick and simple, which also had to be gluten free for one of my colleagues.

 

I still had some Onken mango, papaya and passionfruit yogurt left from this fruity yogurt brulee

and wondered if you could put yogurt into cookies, since you can put it into cake. Turns out you can! I created my own recipe using basic ingredients plus the yogurt and they turned out well, though they were absolutely huge and looked more like rock cakes than cookies – they actually have a very cakey texture which is not quite what I was expecting but was really nice. The only gluten-free flour I had was self raising so I wondered if it would have been better using plain and I would have ended up with flat cookies, but I do actually like the way these turned out. These are great straight from the oven and also really good for breakfast!

 

Soft and fruity yogurt cookies – an original recipe by Caroline Makes

 

1 and ¼ cups gluten free self-raising flour

¾ cup caster sugar

1/3 cup Onken mango, papaya and passionfruit yogurt (or any other flavour)

50g butter or marg, softened

1 egg

 

Preheat oven to 180C. Mix the flour and sugar and stir in the yogurt. Then beat in the butter and the egg until you have a sticky dough.

 

 

Line a baking sheet with baking paper and place spoonfuls of the dough onto the paper, flattening them slightly. If you do them as big as I did you will have huge cookies, but then one of these and a cup of tea makes a very nice breakfast!

Bake for 15-20 minutes depending on the size - they should look baked but still be slightly soft.

 

I’m sharing these soft and fruity yogurt cookies with Alphabakes, the blog challenge I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker as the letter I have chosen is Y.

 

 

Food From Fiction: Penny's Passion Pudding (Bread Pudding)

 Not long ago I picked a book in the charity shop called Sweet Nothings by Sheila Norton. It wasn't a great read - a bit predictable, and I think aimed at an older generation than myself. It's about a woman called Penny who is frustrated with her husband and fancies someone at work, and is tempted by an affair, and is also campaigning for a local bypass.

She gets interviewed on the radio about the bypass but is also asked how she manages to keep the passion her marriage alive after however many years, and mentions that her husband loves her bread pudding. She ends up a local celebrity with everyone wanting to know about "Penny's passion pudding".  There is a recipe at the back of the book for the bread pudding so I decided to give it a go.

The name made me want to add passion fruit as well, which is a bit different to a traditional bread pudding, but this recipe included dried apricots so I thought why not. I also bought a large tin of mango puree on a whim at the supermarket and decided that mango and passionfruit would be a nice fruity combination for a summery bread pudding.

So this is what I used, for I suppose what you would call Caroline's Passion Pudding.

8 slices stale bread
2 eggs
100ml milk
200g sultanas and/or raisins - equal quantities of each if you like
50g French glacé cherries
55g mixed peel
2 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp cinnamon
2 passion fruit, scooped out
200g mango puree
Sprinkling of brown sugar

 Preheat oven to 175C.

Place the bread slices in a large shallow bowl. Beat the eggs with the milk and pour over the bread. Leave to soak in for ten minutes.

Grease a large oven proof dish and layer the bread with the other ingredients as equally as possible until you have used everything up. Sprinkle the top with brown sugar.

Bake in the oven for about an hour - 1 hour 15 mins. Serve warm.

 I'm sending my Passion Pudding with passion fruit, mango puree and mixed peel to Alphabakes, as the letter this month is P.

Watermelon Passionfruit Margarita

Fruity cocktails are perfect for the summer whether it is at a barbecue, at a beach bar or even just at home grumbling about how long it is taking to move house when you are dealing with the world's most frustrating people. Or is that just me...?

This month's Random Recipes from Belleau Kitchen is not a cooking challenge this time; instead Dom wants us to select a cocktail book at random from our collection (I have one or two I think, not enough that choosing at random would be hard!) and choose a page at random and make that cocktail. Now, as I was expecting to have moved house by now, nearly all of my cookery books are sealed up in boxes. As it turns out, my vendors are on holiday this week and my buyer on holiday the week after (no holiday for me, sigh) and there's still no sign of when we are going to exchange. Which means I need a stiff drink!

I hope Dom doesn't mind that I didn't select a recipe at random, but the way this cocktail came about is still fairly random. My boyfriend's mum had bought a watermelon on a whim but then decided she didn't know what to do with it, so gave it to me (random ingredient). I then opened my drinks cupboard (which funnily enough wasn't yet packed and sealed up, it was just that we left the kitchen until last, promise!) and grabbed the first bottle I found, which was tequila (random selection). And then decided to make a cocktail from those ingredients.

Tequila is used in margaritas so that's what I've made. The watermelon is lovely frozen, and then you have a frozen margarita, so if you have time, cut a slice of watermelon and pop it in the freezer for an hour or so.

Chop the watermelon into cubes and put in a blender with about 100ml of either lemonade lemon and lime flavour fizzy water.

To sweeten the drink still further (I do like a sugary cocktail!) you can use either sugar syrup or passion fruit syrup - I bought this online from Funkin Syrup and have been using it in all sorts of things lately. Add a generous glug or more depending on how sweet you want it. Pulse in the blender until the watermelon is pureed. Finally add the tequila (a shot's worth per person) and either pulse in the blender again or transfer to a cocktail shaker and shake well.

Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a wedge of watermelon.

I'm sending this to Random Recipes, hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen.

Mango and Passionfruit Tiramisu

Tuscany Now, an Italian villa rental specialist, invited me to take part in a cookery competition to create an Italian-inspired dish, the #TuscanyNowCookOff. I immediately thought of tiramisu but wanted to put my own twist on it, so came up with this mango and passionfruit tiramisu, which was absolutely delicious. It's also really easy and would be the perfect dessert to make while staying in a Tuscany villa... well, I can dream!


To serve 6-8 (depending on portion size) you need:

200g pack sponge fingers
100ml orange juice
80ml passion fruit syrup (I used Funkin Syrup, which I bought online)
250g mascarpone cheese
125ml fat-free plain yogurt
1 egg
50g caster sugar
1 mango, thinly sliced (or use tinned sliced mango)
2 passionfruit

Combine the orange juice and 50ml of the passion fruit syrup in a shallow bowl and dip the sponge fingers one at a time in the liquid, turning to cover both sides.

Layer half the sponge fingers in the bottom of a large serving dish.

In another bowl beat the mascarpone, yogurt, and 30ml of the passionfruit syrup. Then beat in the caster sugar and egg until well combined.

Spoon half the mixture over the sponge fingers.

Lay the mango slices on top to form the next layer.

Scoop out the middle of the two passionfruit and combine with the rest of the mascarpone mixture.

Place another layer of sponge fingers in the bowl then top it off with the mascarpone and passionfruit mixture.

Place in the fridge for at least one hour or overnight. Return to room temperature before serving.

 You can serve it straight from the dish...

... or use a pastry cutter to cut out a circle of the tiramisu as I did here. You can see all the different layers inside!

 I also drizzled a little passion fruit syrup around the tiramisu and served two more slices of mango on the side.

This dessert is absolutely delicious; rich and creamy but the fresh fruit flavours are perfect for summer. The passion fruit seeds give a satisfying crunch on top. Using the fat-free plain yogurt instead of the more traditional double cream makes the dessert a little lighter in calories and would suit glamourous Italians who like to look after their figure! I think this is as good as any traditional tiramisu I've had in a restaurant, but I've never come across one this flavour before.

Umbongo Cake

Umbongo, Umbongo, they drink it in the Congo.... How many of you remember the (rather politically incorrect) television advert for the fruit juice drink from the 80s? Did you know Umbongo is still around?

The letter that we have chosen for Alphabakes this month is U and as soon as I remembered Umbongo, I knew I wanted to recreate the flavours in cake form - so that's exactly what I've done! I bought a carton of the juice drink - it didn't taste quite like I thought I remembered, but it was a long time ago! Reading the back of the carton I discovered that the main ingredients are apple, lemon, orange, pineapple, passion fruit and mandarin. So I stocked up on fruit and went to work creating my own recipe - it tasted amazing (even though I say so myself!).

Umbongo Cake

An original recipe by Caroline Makes

You need:

3 cups self-raising flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

2 cups caster sugar

3 eggs

1/2 cup vegetable oil

zest and juice of 1 lemon

zest and juice of 1 orange

juice of 1 mandarin

2 apples, peeled and chopped

300g tinned or fresh pineapple, chopped

2 passion fruit, scooped out

Preheat oven to 180C. I have to confess that I forgot to add the sugar in this recipe until later so the picture isn't particularly representative... you should start by creaming the butter and the sugar.

 
 Then beat in the eggs, and fold in the flour and baking powder. Finally mix in the oil.

Zest the orange and lemon and juice both fruits along with the mandarin. Add the zest and juice to the cake mixture and stir in gently.

 Chop the apple and pineapple and scoop out the middle of the passion fruit and mix in.

You can still see the passion fruit seeds in the mixture. They retain a little of their crunch when the cake is cooked, so you may prefer to leave the passion fruit out, but I didn't mind the seeds.I asked a friend for his opinion and he thought the seeds were fine in the cake and said he could definitely taste the passion fruit amid all the other flavours.

Grease and/or line two 9 inch cake tins - I sprayed mine with Cake Release. Bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes.

Allow to cool in the tin before turning out onto a wire rack.The cakes are pretty soft as the mixture is so runny, due to the juice, so if you remove the cakes from the tin too early they will crack - as the one on the left did here! I left the one on the right in the tin to cool and it came out perfectly.

 I wanted to add some Umbongo into the icing, and made a cream cheese icing with cream cheese, icing sugar and a dash of Umbongo. The icing tasted mainly of icing sugar though - the Umbongo would work better in a glaze I think, but I wanted a thick creamy frosting for this cake.

 I spread the icing in the middle and on top of the cake. For some reason I can never get cream cheese icing to be particularly stuff, I wonder what I'm doing wrong?

I also spread the icing around the side of the cake.

The cake was very moist and the icing quite squidgy, so you definitely need to eat this cake with a fork - but what a cake! I'm really pleased with my recipe - this is probably one of the nicest cakes I have made. It doesn't exactly taste like Umbongo so I would say the cake is inspired by Umbongo rather than tastes like it, but the flavour combination is wonderful and the amount of fruit makes the cake very moist and light.

I'm sending this to Alphabakes, the blog challenge I host along with Ros at The More Than Occasional Baker, as our letter this month is U.