Raspberry cupcakes and food obsession

close upMy 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!

biteRaspberry 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

raspberriesPreheat 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.

mixAdd 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.

lolliesSpoon 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.

sceneDecorate 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!

Rich chocolate cake and edible flowers

sliceI have wanted to use edible flowers for so long. Pre-blog. The idea that such beautiful decorations are edible fits in well with my general approach to cooking – I don’t like things to just look good, I want them to taste good as well.


So when I stumbled across some gorgeous edible flowers at Leichhardt organic markets, I bought them on impulse. Continue reading “Rich chocolate cake and edible flowers”

Gatsby-inspired sponge

I saw Gatsby last weekend. And I was inspired.

Brace yourself for part one of my Gatsby posts.

It was beautiful and opulent and slightly magical. The dresses were all over-the-top and the settings were too fabulous to be real. And I loved them for that.

Nick Carraway is idealistic, Jordan Baker is marvelous and Gatsby is a dreamer. The film is full of people who would make fabulous dinner guests – they’re flawed and impulsive, but imagine the stories they could share! Daisy appears to have no opinion on anything, but at least she added to the beautiful scenery. As long as she’d agree to just sit there and bat her eyelashes, I’d let her partake in our dinner soiree.

I’d never read the book (I know, judge me as you see fit), but I think that doing things in excess is a good mantra to live by!

I’m all for simple recipes usually, but for two posts you’re going to have to allow me a bit of opulence. This sponge is easy AND it looks fabulous – what more could you want? It’s my nanna’s recipe, so it’s tried and tested. Unfortunately the sponge didn’t turn out as big as it should have because of my impatience – I like to think that it was slightly to do with the humidity in the air today though.
Cake

Don’t be disheartened by its flatness, when you do the recipe right, this cake IS old-school glamour.

Gatsby-inspired sponge

  • 4 eggs
  • 1 cup flour
  • ¾ cup sugar
  • 1tsp baking powder
  • 3tbsp water
  • 3 tbsp of lemon juice

 

Preheat oven to 180°C.Table view

Grease cake tin and sprinkle with sifted icing sugar.Eggs

Separate egg whites and put the yolks to one side. Beat the egg whites in an electric mixer until they’re stiff. Don’t get impatient like I did, this leads to flat sponges! It should take about 8 minutes at a high speed on your mixer. Persevere!

Add the yolks to the stiff whites mixture and continue beating until the mixture thickens.

Add your sugar and allow it to just combine then sift in the flour and baking powder. Squeeze in the lemon juice and mix it in gently – try to let as little air out of the mixture as possible.

Cream shadows

Pour the mixture into your prepared tin and bake for 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. What I would normally do with a sponge is cut it in half and then fill the middle with copious amounts of jam and cream. Being unable to cut my pancake of a sponge in half, I whipped up the cream, added 1/2 a cup of icing sugar to it and then folded some watered down jam into it to make icing.

 

So put your flapper dresses on, buy some fake diamonds and drink everything out of a champagne flute – Gatsby makes his own reality more fantastic through his imaginings, and so should we!

Host an afternoon tea and add a little sparkle to it.

partyIMG_3986