Lemon and raspberry Madeira cake

I’m not a huge fan of Madeira cake – I’ve always found it to be rather dry and bland. However, when my friend asked for help in making a fondant-covered Mr Bump cake for her son’s first birthday cake, I knew that it had to be Madeira cake. We needed to make the cake on the Thursday for the party on the Saturday, which meant that the cake needed to last well and the cake needed to be covered in a decent layer of fondant icing. Sponge is too light and can collapse under heavy icing, and Madeira cake tends to last better as well.

Having never made Madeira cake, I decided that I needed to test some recipes in advance. This first recipe is adapted from the BBC Good Food’s Madeira Loaf Cake. When I baked it, I increased the quantities to a 5 egg recipe, however this was huge! Therefore, I have reduced the quantities below to make a 4 egg recipe, which should fit perfectly in a deep 20cm cake tin. I have also added the glycerine to this recipe as it was something suggested in the second Madeira cake recipe that I tried and I think it does help to maintain moisture in the cake.

In order to get a beautifully flat and evenly baked cake, I use my magi-cake strips: these are an investment but they make a huge difference! You soak them in water and then wrap them around the cake tin: this adds an extra layer therefore prevents the edge of the cake from cooking more quickly and drying out. It also prevents the cake from doming and so ensures a nice even top to your cake.

Unfortunately, I underestimated the length of time needed to bake my cake and opened the oven too many times! This meant that the cake ended up sunken in the middle. I managed to hide this under a thick layer of buttercream – as you can see from the picture, you would never know!

To cut cakes in half, I would hugely recommend a cake-cutting wire: this is a lot easier than trying to use a knife!

Overall, I wasn’t sure about this cake – EHH and I both felt that it was still a little dry. However, EHH took it into work and they loved it! Several of his colleagues claimed that it was the best cake that I have ever made!

Lemon and raspberry Madeira cake

Ingredients

1. 235g butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
2. 235g golden caster sugar
3. 4 large eggs
4. Grated zest 2 lemons
5. Few drops vanilla extract
6. 1 tsp glycerine
7. 265g self-raising flour
8. 65g ground almonds

Buttercream icing:

1. 110g butter, at room temperature
2. 500g icing sugar, sifted
3. 3 tblsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

To fill and decorate:

1. 6 tablespoons raspberry jam
2. Raspberries
3. Mint leaves

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 170C.
2. Grease and base-line a 20cm deep round cake tin with baking parchment.
3. Using an electric whisk or stand mixer, beat together the butter and sugar until light and creamy (about 5 minutes of beating).
4. Beat the eggs together in a separate bowl.
5. Beat the eggs into the butter/sugar mix, a little at a time, beating well between each addition.
6. Mix in the lemon zest and vanilla.
7. Fold in the flour and almonds until you have a thick batter. The batter should be loose enough that it falls off a wooden spoon, if it’s too thick mix in a splash of milk.
8. Tip the batter into the tin and smooth over the top.
9. Bake for 75 – 100 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cover with foil after about 60 minutes to stop the top from burning.
10. Remove from the oven then leave to cool for 15 mins then remove from the tin, peel away the paper and leave on a wire rack to cool completely before slicing.
11. While the cake is cooling, beat the butter, juice and half of the icing sugar in a large mixing bowl until smooth.
12. Add the rest of the icing sugar and beat until smooth and creamy.
13. Once the cake is completely cool, cut in half.
14. Cover one half with raspberry jam.
15. Cover with the other half and then top with buttercream.
16. Decorate with the raspberries and mint leaves. 

Rhubarb and custard cupcakes

Having recently moved my rhubarb into a new position, it has gone crazy! So, as the Wimbledon Ladies’ Final finished disappointing quickly, I had lots of time to try out lots of new recipes to use up my rhubarb!

Having decided to try out a rhubarb and lemon cake, I fancied making something with a Wimbledon theme and so decided on some tennis ball cupcakes. If I were making these for something special, I’d probably have made some more appropriate strawberry and cream flavoured cakes, or maybe even some Pimms flavoured cakes, but as they were just for fun, and I needed to make use of my rhubarb glut, I decided on rhubarb and custard flavoured cupcakes. These also gave me the opportunity to try out my new flavourings from Lakeland.

I followed my standard vanilla cupcake recipe, replacing the vanilla extract with 18 drops of the rhubarb flavouring and filling the cupcakes with rhubarb compote. I replaced the vanilla extract in the buttercream with 15 drops of custard flavouring. The rhubarb flavour did come through gently in the cakes but I think that it could have done with a bit more – I have suggested 20 drops in the recipe below. I’m not completely convinced by the custard flavour – I’m not sure that the custard taste really came through the buttercream – it didn’t taste particularly different to standard vanilla buttercream. I’ll have to try out the flavouring in something else to test this out.

Overall though, I did enjoy these cakes. I wasn’t sure that the grass nozzle (mine came in a set from Lakeland that is incredibly useful!) would give the right effect for the tennis balls, but it worked out pretty well. The cakes tasted good and the slightly sour rhubarb compote was balanced well by the sweet custard buttercream. Will definitely make these again.

Rhubarb and custard cupcakes

Ingredients

1. 110g butter, at room temperature
2. 225g golden castor sugar
3. 2 large eggs
4. 150g self-raising flour, sifted
5. 125g plain flour, sifted
6. 120ml semi-skimmed milk, at room temperature
7. 20 drops rhubarb flavouring
8. 300g rhubarb
9. 1-2 tblsp soft brown sugar

Buttercream:

1. 110g butter, at room temperature and very soft
2. 500g icing sugar, sifted
3. 15 drops custard flavouring
4. 60ml milk
5. Green and yellow paste food colouring
6. 100g icing sugar

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160C.
2. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with cupcake cases.
3. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy this will take at least 5 minutes with an electric hand mixer – don’t rush this stage).
4. Whisk the eggs together in a small bowl.
5. Add the eggs to the butter and sugar mixture, a bit at a time, mixing for a few minutes after each addition. It should result in a lovely light mousse-like mixture.
6. Combine the two flours in a separate bowl.
7. Combine the milk and rhubarb flavouring in a jug.
8. Add one third of the flours to the creamed mixture and stir gently to combine.
9. Pour in one third of the milk mixture and stir gently.
10. Continue to add flours and then milk mixture alternately, stirring gently after each addition, until all have been added.
11. Spoon mixture into the cupcake cases, filling to about 2/3 full (or about 65g each).
12. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes until lightly golden brown. The cakes will spring back lightly when touched, if cooked.
13. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in tin for about 10 minutes, before carefully placing on a wire rack to finish cooling.

While the cakes are in the oven:

1. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter, milk, vanilla extract and half of the icing sugar until smooth.
2. Add the rest of the icing sugar and beat until smooth and creamy.
3. Add the green and yellow food colouring until you reach the desired colour.
4. Put buttercream into a piping bag with a large grass nozzle.
5. Chop the rhubarb into approx. 2cm slices.
6. Place in a small saucepan with a splash of water and 1 tblsp soft brown sugar.
7. Heat gently until the rhubarb is soft.
8. Strain off any juices through a sieve
9. Mash the rhubarb gently and add extra soft brown sugar if needed. 

Once cakes are cooked and cooled:

1. Use a tea spoon to cut a cone out from the centre of the cakes.
2. Cut the top disk off each cone and retain.
3. Fill the hole in each cake with a teaspoon of the prepared rhubarb and then replace a cake disk onto each cake to seal the hole.
4. Pipe short grass-like spikes onto each cupcake until covered.
5. Leave to firm.
6. Mix the icing sugar with a small amount of water until it reaches a toothpaste-like consistency.
7. Place this icing into a piping bag with a small round nozzle.
8. Use a rounded knife to gently draw on the curves of the tennis ball onto each cupcake.
9. Pipe over these curves with the white icing.

Carrot cupcakes with orange buttercream

It’s been a busy couple of months with lots of friends and family visiting! I made these carrot cupcakes about a month ago, when some friends were visiting on their way down from Leeds to Cornwall. I fancied making these as I haven’t made them for ages – they are a fairly quick and easy cake to make but they taste delicious.

The recipe comes from my “go to” Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery book. I’ve made them before and they work brilliantly well with the orange cream cheese icing in the book, however, they then need to be kept in the fridge. As my friends were travelling onwards, I wanted to give them some for their holiday and so I stuck with a simple orange buttercream and a sprinkle of cinnamon.

The recipe is simple and these are a very reliable bake. The mixture is a lot runnier than most cake mixtures, but don’t be alarmed by this. If you have time before you start baking, soak the raisins in a mixture of boiling water, orange juice and a bit of cinnamon and they will plump up beautifully.  The recipe calls for 130g raisins, but I usually chuck a few more in.

Carrot cupcakes with orange buttercream

Ingredients

1. 225g carrots, peeled and trimmed
2. 130g raisins
3. 2 large eggs
4. 130g caster sugar
5. 120ml corn oil
6. ½ tsp vanilla extract
7. Grated zest of 1 orange
8. 120g plain flour
9. 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
10. Pinch of salt
11. 1 tsp ground cinnamon

Orange buttercream

1. 115g butter, at room temperature
2. 500g icing sugar, sifted
3. 4 tblsp freshly squeezed orange juice

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 160C.
2. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with cupcake cases.
3. Finely grate the carrots and drain off any liquid.
4. Combine the grated carrot with the raisins in a large bowl and set to one side.
5. Using a stand mixer, beat the eggs and sugar together for several minutes.
6. Add the oil, vanilla and orange zest and beat well.
7. Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt and cinnamon together in another bowl.
8. Gradually add these ingredients to the egg and sugar mixture, folding carefully after each addition.
9. Pour this mixture into the bowl containing the carrots and raisins and mix with a wooden spoon until evenly distributed.
10. Carefully spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases, filling them to about two-thirds full.
11. Bake in the oven for about 25 minutes, until the cakes bounce back when touched.
12. Remove from the oven and leave the cakes in the tin for about ten minutes before placing on a wire rack to cool.
13. To make the buttercream, beat the butter, juice and half of the icing sugar until smooth.
14. Add the rest of the icing sugar and beat until smooth and creamy.
15. Spoon the buttercream into a piping bag topped with a Wilton 1M piping nozzle.
16. Once the cakes have cooled, pipe a swirl of buttercream onto the cakes and top with a sprinkle of cinnamon. 

Passion fruit cupcakes

Having made Millionaire’s Shortbread for my cousin’s visit, I was in a baking mood, so I decided to make some cupcakes too. I had half a jar of passion fruit curd left from making lemon and passion fruit cupcakes not long ago, which needed using up, so I convinced EHH to pop up to the shop to buy me some passion fruits and decided to make passion fruit cupcakes.

I started by straining the passion fruit pulp through a sieve and realised that you don’t get much from three passion fruit! Therefore, I decided to stick with a simple vanilla cupcake base, fill it with passion fruit curd and top with buttercream flavoured with the passion fruit juice.

The vanilla cupcakes worked well as a base for the passion fruit curd and buttercream. However, I think these cupcakes ended up with too much curd and not enough buttercream – the curd over-powered and made the cake slightly too tart (even for my tastes). I think the cakes would have worked better with a filling of curd and a whole swirl of buttercream. The strained passion fruit juice had a real hit of flavour and worked well in the buttercream, although I would suggest 4 passion fruits for slightly more flavour.

Vanilla cupcakes with passion fruit curd and buttercream

Ingredients

1. 110g butter, at room temperature
2. 225g golden castor sugar
3. 2 large eggs
4. 150g self-raising flour, sifted
5. 125g plain flour, sifted
6. 120ml semi-skimmed milk
7. I tsp vanilla extract
8. 4 tblsp passion fruit curd

Buttercream:

1. 115g butter, at room temperature
2. 500g icing sugar, sifted
3. 4 passion fruits – juice strained through a sieve
4. Milk (as needed)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160C/350F/GM4.
2. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with cupcake cases.
3. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy this will take at least 5 minutes with an electric hand mixer – don’t rush this stage).
4. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing for a few minutes after each addition. It should result in a lovely light mousse-like mixture.
5. Combine the two flours in a separate bowl.
6. Combine the milk and vanilla extract in a jug.
7. Add one third of the flours to the creamed mixture and stir gently to combine.
8. Pour in one third of the milk mixture and stir gently.
9. Continue to add flours and then milk mixture alternately, stirring gently after each addition, until all have been added.
10. Spoon mixture into the cupcake cases, filling to about 2/3 full.
11. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes until lightly golden brown. The cakes will spring back lightly when touched, if cooked.
12. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in tin for about 10 minutes, before carefully placing on a wire rack to finish cooling.

While the cakes are in the oven, make up the buttercream:

1. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter, passion fruit juice and half of the icing sugar until smooth.
2. Add the rest of the icing sugar and beat until smooth and creamy.
3. Add milk (if needed to bring the buttercream to a piping consistency) and beat again.
4. Put buttercream into a piping bag with a medium star nozzle.

To decorate:

1. Use a wide skewer to make three deep holes into each cooled cupcake.
2. Put the passion fruit curd into a piping bag and pipe into each of the holes.
3. Pipe small swirls of buttercream around the edge of the cupcake.
4. Fill the centre of the buttercream swirls with curd.

Lemon and passion fruit cupcakes

As I was headed back home to Guernsey (affectionately known as the Rock) for the week and it was one of my oldest friend’s birthdays, I felt that I should make some cupcakes to take with me.  During a visit to our local garden centre (I know, I’m sooo middle-aged!), I found a delicious-sounding jar of passion fruit curd. I absolutely love passion fruit and so decided to give it a try.  I wasn’t sure about adding curd into a standard cupcake recipe and so decided to use it as a filling in lemon cupcakes. I followed my standard lemon cupcake recipe, simply replacing the lemon curd with the passion fruit curd.  If I had also found some fresh passion fruit, I’d have strained the juice to make passion fruit buttercream, but, as I didn’t, I stuck with lemon buttercream.

This curd is delicious and worked brilliantly with the lemon cupcakes – they even got my dad’s seal of approval!

 

I wanted to create some fairly bright and modern cupcakes and so decided on a fairly bright pink, blue and white colour scheme.  I also wanted to use my “Live, Laugh, Love” embosser (from this set) and so started with these. The flower-covered cakes were a nice, simple design to do and I decided to do the last two cupcakes with a patchwork covering (for instructions on how to do the patchwork decoration – see this blogpost).   

The photos aren’t that good this time as they were taken rather hurriedly while waiting for the taxi to arrive to take me to the airport! But overall, I was fairly pleased with how these cakes turned out. They did get a little squashed on the plane journey over to Guernsey but they just about survived in a respectable condition!

Honey and lemon cupcakes

Having made Hummingbird cupcakes for the netball girls to celebrate my birthday, next step was to decide on cakes to take to work. I decided to take my actual birthday as leave, so decided to take cakes in the following Monday – which gave me the weekend to prepare! As there are quite a few people to cater for, I decided to chuck together another Sticky Ginger Cake, as I’ve made it before for work and it has gone down really well. Next, I felt that it was expected that I produce cupcakes of some kind, so decided to have another go at the Honey and Lemon cupcakes that I made recently. Finally, I decided to make some simple lemon finger biscuits – will write these up in the next blog post. 

The honey and lemon cupcakes were inspired by Martha Kearney on Great British Bake Off for Comic Relief and last time I made them, I had a go at copying her Beehive style decoration. Although they tasted delicious, I wasn’t that satisfied with the overall appearance and they were very fiddly to decorate so I decided to have go with a slightly different design for the cupcakes this time. 

I was mainly happy with the overall design of these cupcakes this time – although I’m not sure the actual beehives looked quite right. I started by swirling the buttercream onto the cupcake with a large round nozzle (mine is from this set). If I were to do again, I may try using the same nozzle but instead of simple piping a swirl, building dots of icing one on top of another – this may create a better beehive. I then coloured the buttercream with green colour paste and used one of these piping nozzles (although I got mine in a set like this one from Lakeland - incredibly useful!) to pipe on the grass. 

Finally, I decorated the cupcakes with bees and flowers made from ready-to-roll icing.

The bees are actually quite fiddly to make but worth the effort:

1. Start by rolling a small cone shape of yellow ready-to-roll icing. 
2. Roll out black ready-to-roll icing on a surface lightly dusted with icing sugar - it will need to be very thin. 
3. Cut into very thin strips. 
4. Dip a clean paintbrush in water and lightly run over your yellow cone. 
5. Stick two strips of the black icing onto the cone to create your bee's stripes. 
6. Use a sharp knife to make two small incisions on the back of your bee. 
7. Find two similarly sized pieces of sliced almond and dip one tip of each piece in water.
8. Insert the dampened tips into the incisions created in the bee - this will be your bee's wings. 
9. Use a black food colouring pen to add eyes.  

Hummingbird Cupcakes (banana, pineapple and pecan)

 

So, seeing as it was my birthday, I figured I had better make cakes for the netball girls. Netball was on Saturday morning – I had Friday off but was planning to be out all day, so cakes had to be made on Thursday evening after work. This meant two things – I needed to make something that would last well for a couple of days and that wouldn’t take too much time and effort.  I already had some ginger cake made at the weekend but wanted to take a second option. I had a flick through my recipe file and found the recipe for Hummingbird Cupcakes.  This is another recipe from the Sara Stanley cupcake course that I did at the Bertinet Kitchen (see also my Red Velvet recipe) and I love this recipe. I hadn’t made these for ages and they’re fairly easy to make, don’t need a lot of fussy decoration and they last really well, so decision made!

Tins of crushed pineapple aren’t always that easy to find – so, if needed, just use a normal can of pineapple and whizz the pineapple up in a food processor or mini chopper.  I chucked the pineapple and banana in a food processor and quickly blitzed them up together, and this worked really well.

The original Sara Stanley Hummingbird recipe topped the cupcakes with a vanilla cream cheese frosting – this is delicious and complements the cake flavours beautifully. However, the problem with cream cheese frosting is that it should be kept in the fridge – which isn’t great for the cakes themselves. As I was planning to keep the cakes for a couple of days, I wanted to do something different. As I had the pineapple juice leftover from the tinned pineapple, I decided to have a go at making pineapple buttercream. I reduced the pineapple juice down to approx. 60ml by microwaving it for 30 seconds at a time until suitably reduced. I then added this to my normal buttercream recipe in place of milk. It tasted great and really worked well with these cakes.

You may find that you need to make extra caramelised pecans – they’re delicious!

Hummingbird Cupcakes

Ingredients

1. 1 large egg
2. 1 egg yolk
3. 230g caster sugar
4. 110g corn/grapeseed/sunflower oil
5. 1 tsp vanilla extract
6. 125g low fat yoghurt
7. 100g mashed banana (1 medium banana)
8. 100g drained tinned pineapple, crushed
9. 160gg plain flour
10. Pinch of salt
11. ¼ tsp cinnamon
12. ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
13. Pinch of baking powder
14. 60g chopped pecans

For the pineapple buttercream

1. Leftover pineapple juice from the tin of pineapple
2. 110g butter at room temperature
3. 500g icing sugar 

For the caramelised pecans

1. 30g butter
2. 30g light brown sugar
3. 60g pecans

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 165C. Place 12 large cupcake cases into a bun tin and about 8 mini cupcake cases into a mini bun tin.
2. Whisk egg, yolk and sugar until pale and fluffy.
3. Stream in oil and vanilla, whilst continuing to whisk.
4. Add yoghurt, banana and pineapple and mix.
5. Sieve the flour into a separate bowl, add all the remaining dry ingredients and stir together.
6. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir gently until combined.
7. Fill the large cupcakes to two-thirds full and then use the remaining mixture to two-thirds fill the mini cupcake cases.
8. Bake until the cakes are golden and spring back when lightly touched. The mini cupcakes will take 15-25 minutes to bake and the larger cupcakes 20-30 minutes.
9. When baked, remove from oven and allow to cool in the tin for 5 minutes. Remove from the tins and allow to cool fully on a wire cooling rack. 

For the buttercream

1. Pour the pineapple juice into a microwaveable bowl and microwave for 30 seconds at a time until reduced to 60ml. Allow to cool.
2. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter, reduced, cooled pineapple juice and half the icing sugar until smooth.
3. Gradually add the rest of the icing sugar and beat again until smooth and creamy.

For the caramelised pecans

1. Melt the butter in a small frying pan, over a low heat.
2. Add the sugar and pecans and stir for about 3 minutes until caramelised.