I’ve not felt like baking in this baking heat, but yesterday saw a slight reprieve in the daytime temperature around here, a mere 24 degrees, so I seized the opportunity to sneak in July’s cupcake of the month recipe.
The cakes on the calendar this month were called ‘ruby-red’ cupcakes, and required red food colouring as well as cocoa powder to make a deep red colour. However, since we had red currants in the fruit and veg box this week, I thought that I’d make the cakes red by putting red currants in instead of the food colouring – as simple as that. The photos make them look more brown, but when you bite into them, there is lots of redness!
I also had some union jack cupcake cases left from last summer’s olympic and jubilee festivities, and I thought why not bake some cakes with lovely local British summer fruit in them.
They turned out very well – the recipe makes quite a dense cake, very moist and tasty, as it has natural yoghurt in it. They weren’t too sweet either, as the red currants added a sharpness and the cocoa powder a bitterness as well as the sugar to sweeten. My testers approved, which is the main thing in our house.
Ingredients – makes 12
- 130g self-raising flour
- 100g sugar
- 100ml yoghurt
- 25g cocoa powder
- 2 eggs
- 100g margarine
- 80g red currants
- 50g margarine
- 100g icing sugar
- 20g red currants
Method
- Prepare a muffin tray with cupcake cases, and preheat the oven to 180ºC (fan).
- Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl until smooth and fluffy.
- Add the eggs and beat well.
- Add the flour and cocoa powder and mix until just combined.
- Add the red currants and yoghurt and mix until just combined.
- Spoon into the cases to about two thirds full.
- Bake for about 20 minutes until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean, and leave to cool.
- Meanwhile make up the drizzle by creaming the margarine, icing sugar and red currants together – I left a few lumpier bits of red currant for texture, but most of the juice went into the drizzle.
- Spoon it onto the top of the cakes.
- Eat and enjoy as fresh as possible.
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