So the big weekend came for Kate and Kerim where I had the pleasure of spending the day in her Mum and Dad’s lovely kitchen in glorious France. The top cake for cutting was a larger version of the Pear, Ginger and Chocolate ganache cupcakes, it survived until the next day so I was able to take a much  better, less intoxicated photograph. I had many compliments, particularly of the pear and ginger cakes, I think the lavender were most popular with the children. (I heard that some ‘grown-ups’ had four!)

So as the recipes for these cakes are already up I’ve littered this post with images – the cupcakes looked beautiful on their homemade (by Kate and her mum) tiered cake stands. I’m still waiting to reap my reward (I’ve bagged the one with a teacup on top).

I’d quite happily travel the world making cupcakes at weddings – what a great job!

Trying to maintain the illusion that summer is still with us I decided to make these seasonal cupcakes to celebrate Ivy’s Uncle’s birthday. Another bonkers recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook - suggesting that you cover yourself and anyone in the near vicinity with flour. They were very tasty and moist and the fresh strawberries were lovely. I halved the icing and the crumbled digestives on top – how on earth they thought you actually fit 200g biscuit crumbs on top of these is beyond me, 100g was too much (and according to some could be omitted altogether). I did like the upside down cheesecake idea though.

Ingredients:
120g plain flour
140g caster sugar
1 1/2 tsps baking powder
pinch of salt
40g unsalted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
12 large strawberries, chopped into pieces
200g (yeah, right! Try 80g -100 g) digestive biscuits

Cream cheese frosting:
300g icing sugar sifted
50g unsalted butter and room temperature
125g cold cream cheese
(But I halved all these ingredients)

Oven at 170 degrees.
Put the flour, bp , salt and butter in a bowl and beat with a handheld electric whisk – then take a  shower. Alternatively, put the ingresdeitns in a bowl and rub the butter into the dry mixture with your fingers until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.
Pour in the milk and vanilla extract and beta until combined. Add the egg and beat well for a few minutes.

Divide the chopped strawberries between 12 paper cakes and spoon the mixture evenly on top. I think I’d rather mix the strawberries into the mixture first though as I did with the pear and ginger cupcakes. I’m not so keen on the fruit being at the bottom, I prefer the fruit within the cake. Bake for about 20-25 minutes (I didn’t use the fan).

Leave to cool then make the icing; combine the icing sugar and butter and beat well then add the cream cheese and beat again but not for too long – it can become runny. Spoon on to the cupcakes and top with the crushed digestive biscuits.

Shonky phone photo I’m afraid. Here are the cupcakes we made for Jude’s birthday. (Plus some supermarket interlopers. Hmph.)

Ours are the yellow ones with a mini-egg (lemon), the ones with white icing and dark chocolate gratings, and the ones with pink icing with white chocolate gratings (these latter two are all chocolate/”red velvet”).

For the lemon ones, I risked another Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook recipe. I feel pretty certain the quantity of baking powder in the Black bottom cupcakes is wrong now. Most of the Hummingbird cupcake recipes have similar quantities of butter, sugar, flour (40g, 140g, 120g ish), and all have 1 and half teaspoons of baking powder – except the black bottom, which has half a teaspoon. Duh.

Anyway, the lemon ones – the method is of course a shambles for the home kitchen, but the results are good with some tweaking.

Soften 40g unsalted butter, then blend it into 140g of caster sugar. You won’t be able to cream it per se, as there’s not enough fat in proportion to sugar. Add 1 egg and 120ml of whole milk and beat – you can do this with a handheld electric mixer. Sift in 150g of flour and 1 and half teaspoons of baking powder, and beat slowly by hand to stop the powdery ingredients spraying all over the shop. Once it’s all combined and moist, hit it with the mixer again to blend nicely.

Another flaw with the Hummingbird recipes is they all say “spoon the mixture into paper cases until two-thirds full”, then claim they’ll make 12. Well, if you use standard muffin cases, and fill them 2/3rds, they actually make 8. Bake for 20 mins in oven pre-heated to 170C.

For the “red velvet” ones we used a recipe Fran found online a while back, and previously posted here. Here’s a tweaked version of the recipe, to make 12:
Soften 60g of unsalted butter then mix with 140g caster sugar; again, you can’t quite cream it, but blend. Then beat in 1 egg, using handheld mixer.
In a separate bowl, sift together:
145g plain flour
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t baking powder
Pinch salt
1/2 T cocoa powder
Then in another bowl, or jug, mix:
120ml buttermilk
1 1/2 T red food colouring (natural, naturally)
1/2 t vanilla essence
1/2 t distilled white vinegar

Add quarter of the dry ingredients to the beaten butter/sugar/egg mix, and beat; then add a third of the wet ingredients and beat. Keep adding alternatively, ending with the dry mix. Beat until well combined.

Half fix 12 muffin cases, then bake for 20 mins at 170C, or until the cakes are springy.

We iced all the cakes with variations of cream-cheese icing, using 300g of icing sugar, sifted; 50g of unsalted butter, softened; 125g of cream cheese.
Add around 100g of the sugar to the butter, and slowly beat in by hand, until well combined, then add more sugar a little at a time; add the cheese, and blend by hand until the powder is no longer powdery. Then beat with electric mix until well combined. For lemon, we added some zest and yellow colouring.

(Another, slightly sharper, pic here.)

I received a special delivery from France last week – some dried organic lavender flowers from Kate’s mum. I had an enjoyable Monday afternoon (while Ivy was asleep and my mum nipped to the shops for us) baking lavender cupcakes. They are another recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook and I got on better with this one, although I think it only makes nine decent cakes rather than the suggested twelve. My mum pointed out of course that perhaps there’s less cake to make room for more icing. Cupcake icing is so mega sweet that I think you can do with less so I made 3/4 of the suggested amount. You can play with this though, but I think Kate would be happier with more cake and less icing. I did leave the lavender to infuse with the milk overnight – I think it’s worth doing it for the maximum time. I seem to keep altering the methods the book suggests – Dan agrees that it’s sometimes a bit odd to whisk up mainly dry ingredients with a hand whisk in an open bowl – obviously it’s going to go everywhere!

They are surprisingly not as overpowering as you might think and have a lovely calming subtle flavour, well that’s my opinion.

Cakes:
120ml whole milk
3 tablespoons lavender flowers
120g plain flour
140g caster sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
40g unsalted butter
1 egg
12 small springs of lavender (or a few flowers for the top)

Frosting:
25ml whole milk
1 tablespoon dried lavender flowers
250g icing sugar
80g unsalted butter
couple of drops of purple/blue food colouring

Put the milk and lavenders flowers for the cake mix in a jug and leave in the fridge over night (or as long as possible – a few hours). Do the same with the milk and flowers for the frosting. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees.
Put flour, sugar, bp and butter in a bowl and rub in the butter until a sandy mixture (don’t whisk it as they suggest – what?!). Strain the lavender infused milk and add slowly to the mix beating well, add the egg, beat well. Spoon the mixture evenly between 12 (9) cupcake cases and bake for about 15-20 minutes or until golden and bounces back once touched. Leave to cool completely before spreading on the icing.

Lavender frosting: Beat together the icing sugar, butter and colouring (I get it started with a wooden spoon or you have a snowy  kitchen again). Strain the milk for the icing and add slowly to the mix beating well. Beat for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy and ready to use.

(The icing’s a bit too turquoise – needs to be more blue, oh well have to experiment more)

Everybody seems to be making cupcakes at the moment. I baked them for my friend whose birthday it was on Friday and fortuitously she had just received a tiered cake stand from another friend – perfect timing!

I just got this recipe from the internet but used a simple butter icing as I didn’t have enough chocolate to melt. I’d like to make that killer American-style frosting some time, when I have the patience to mess about with separating eggs (not that complicated I know, I was just feeling lazy).

I also used the little silicone cupcake moulds, a present for my birthday. It would be nice idea to bake someone little cakes in them as a complete gift. I’ll have to do that some time.

These were delicious and very moist, I couldn’t resist the Hundreds and Thousands!