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.