Category: Entertaining

My last post was about giving in to the gym. It’s day four of me signing up to the gym and I’ve been good so far. Except for the fact that I spend my entire life pinning, instagramming and Googling baked goods.

To say I’m obsessed is an understatement. I’m fairly sure I was dreaming about eating these cupcakes last night, because I was awoken by a sharp pain – I’d bitten the inside of my lip hard enough to draw blood!

These gorgeous little cupcakes came about by accident. I was actually trying to create cupcakes with bubblegum icing; the cupcake was supposed to be a platform to raise my glorious bubblegum icing to dizzying sugary heights.

But the icing never really made it. It didn’t taste as bubblegummy as I’ planned (don’t get me wrong, it was delicious, it just wasn’t bubblegum flavoured), but it didn’t matter, because the cupcake outshone it!!

The cupcake is light and airy. It’s delicately fruity and a little bit like eating a raspberry cloud. Or how I imagine that would taste. The icing is sweet and soft, the perfect complement to the raspberry cloud!

Raspberry cupcake clouds

Makes 24

• 120g butter
• ¾ cup sugar
• ¾ cup raspberries
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups flour
• ½ cup milk
• 1-2 tsp pink food colouring (optional)

Icing:

• 50g butter
• 50g cream cheese
• ¼ tsp strawberry essence
• ¼ tsp orange blossom water
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups icing sugar

Preheat your oven 180°C and grease a 12 capacity cupcake tin.

Cream your butter and sugar together until pale. Add in your raspberries and blend until smooth. This should take 1-2 minutes to eliminate all of the lumps and bumps. You can leave chunks of raspberry in if you’d like, but I prefer them all mixed in, it makes for a smoother batter.

Add in the teaspoon of vanilla and then the eggs, one at a time.

Scoop your flour into the mixture and mix well, ensuring no pockets of flour remain. Add in the milk and combine.

At this point, the raspberries will have added a slight tinge of pinky-purple to the mixture, so you don’t have to add colouring. If, like me, you can’t resist a pop of colour, add in some pink food colouring!

That’s it! These cupcakes are so simple, but the result is so impressive.

Spoon the mixture into your prepared cupcake tins and bake for 16-18 minutes.

Once the cupcakes are out of the oven, allow them to cool for ten minutes. While they cool, mix the butter and cream cheese together until there are no lumps and the mixture is pale. Add in the strawberry essence, orange blossom water and vanilla, followed by the icing sugar. Keep blending until all are combined and smooth.

Decorate using a piping bag, or just spoon it onto your cupcakes and smooth with a knife. I added little chewy lollies to the top of mine, but don’t worry if you don’t have any they’re sweet enough without them!

Serve with a strong black cuppa to balance out all of that sugar.

Enjoy!