Last week, I was having one of my irregular clear outs of our store cupboard and was about to throw out a bag of ground coffee. I brewed it up once but I’m not keen on flavoured hot beverages. Like I’ve said on many occasions I hate waste, so I thought I’d use the coffee to cook with instead of drinking. My coffee raspberry cupcakes with vanilla buttercream idea was born!
I whipped up a basic cupcake recipe; cream butter and sugar, add eggs and fold in the dry ingredients – self-raising flour and the chocolate and raspberry flavoured coffee grounds. In hindsight, I should have reground the coffee on the finest setting; the cupcakes were a little ‘gritty’ on the texture front.
Despite this, they had a wonderful flavour – I’ll be making them again!
I finished them off with a swirl of vanilla buttercream and topped each with a little raspberry – our garden is full of fruiting raspberry canes at the moment.
Click here to save my recipe to Pinterest
- 140g/5oz golden caster sugar
- 140g/5oz butter, softened
- 3 eggs
- 140g/5oz self-raising flour
- 2 tbsp fine ground coffee (or instant dissolved in 1tbsp boiling water)
- 150g/5¼oz butter, softened
- 150g/5¼oz icing sugar
- 1tsp vanilla extract
- 12 fresh raspberries
- Heat oven to 175ºC/350ºF/Gas mark 4
- Line 12 holes in 2 muffin tins with cupcake cases
- Whisk the sugar and butter until light and creamy
- Beat in the eggs, one by one, adding a tablespoon of the flour at the same time (to avoid the mixture curdling)
- Fold in the rest of the flour along with the ground coffee
- Spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases and bake for 15 minutes
- Carefully remove the cupcakes from the baking tins and allow them to cool on a wire rack
- Beat together the softened butter with the (pre-sifted) icing sugar
- Add the vanilla extract and mix in well
- Once the cupcakes have cooled completely, using a spatula spoon the buttercream into a piping bag and add a swirl to the top of each
- Gently push a raspberry into the top of the buttercream (and sprinkling with icing sugar if you like!)
Cakes & Bakes: Jam-filled pound cupcakes
Are cupcakes still all the rage? I never really got that into them, perhaps because I’m terrible at decorating them. The icing has to be perfect for me to really enjoy them. Crunchy icing puts my teeth on edge. It needs to be a sweet, flavoursome butter cream or cream cheese.
These jam-filled pound cupcakes don’t need any topping because the interest is all in the middle. I used some of my home-made mixed berry jelly from last autumn – there are always a few jars in the store cupboard. You can use any fruit jam, marmalade or lemon curd instead. Or what about a spoonful of Nutella? Mmmmmmmm…
I used a pound cake recipe I found in Marvellous Mini-Cakes – a little book full of teensy sweet & savoury cakes. I used to think a pound cake was a cake that weighed a pound! In actual fact, it’s a cake traditionally made with a pound each of its four main ingredients – butter, sugar, flour and eggs… so I guess it’s really a 4lb cake!
As tempting as they may be, please don’t attempt to eat these straight from the oven. The hot, molten jam will scald the roof of your mouth!
Click here to save this recipe for later.
- 120g/4¼oz salted butter
- 120g/4¼oz caster sugar
- 2 eggs, separated
- 120g/4¼oz plain flour, sifted
- 2 scant tsp baking powder
- pinch of salt
- jam
- Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF/Gas mark 4
- Grease a muffin tin and dust with flour or add cupcake/muffin cases
- In a mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until the mixture turns pale and becomes smooth
- Add the egg yolks, flour and salt and combine
- In another bowl, whisk the egg whites
- Add them gradually to the mixture
- Add the baking powder
- As soon as you have stirred in the baking powder, put a dessert-spoonful of cake mixture in each cupcake hole/case
- Add a teaspoonful of jam to the centre of each cake
- Cover with the remaining cake mixture, ensuring that the jam is fully covered by the cake mix
- Put in the oven straight away
- Bake for about 20 minutes. Towards the end of the cooking time, prick with a skewer if it comes away clean, the cupcakes are done
- Allow to cool slightly before turning them out of the tin
Tuesday Huesday: National Cupcake Week
It’s National Cupcake Week this week so I may just have to oblige and make a batch.
Justin’s very particular about his ‘buns’ (as he refers to them). He likes his cupcakes without the tooth-aching icing on top. To me, that makes it just a muffin! What do you think? What’s the difference between a cupcake, bun and a muffin? Are you a fan of the current cupcake fad sweeping the world?