Raspberry and White Chocolate Cupcakes

Sometimes I worry that someone seriously miscalculated my year of birth. I will take my fur-lined slippers over anyone’s glitzy heel, prefer a mug of tea to a Jello-shot and the craziest club night could never tear me away from Strictly Come Dancing. A further habit that seems to suggest my twilight years have set in rather early is my love of cookbooks. I have been known to wake up, stomach rumbling, surrounded by books full with tempting recipes and bright photos that I took to bed (nice and early - I need my sleep) for future inspiration. My latest addition is Cupcakes From the Primrose Bakery, and it was from this that I took this week’s recipe for Raspberry and White Chocolate Cupcakes.

Since white chocolate is the least healthy of all chocolate, naturally it’s my favourite. Fortunately, the raspberries counter the unhealthy aspect. Right? I mean, if you forget about the butter and sugar, and jam... Moving on. The raspberry element to these cupcakes is threefold.  The mixture contains three tablespoons of raspberry jam, giving it the appearance of raspberry ripple (everyone’s favourite back in my day.)  When the cupcakes have cooled completely, a hole in the centre is cut out, filled with a dollop of jam, and replaced. To finish the cakes off, I added a raspberry on top, which looked rather good against the white of the chocolate.

The white chocolate icing recipe called for three tablespoons of the vanilla buttercream icing, which was slightly confusing since the recipe for the latter didn’t explain how much it made in tablespoons. I halved the quantities given in the recipe, and although I didn’t add the double cream in the white chocolate icing recipe, I was left with about two tablespoons left over. Without the cream, the white chocolate flavour really came through.

The raspberry flavour in the mixture was quite subtle, but the dollop of jam brought it out. The sweet white chocolate also tied in with the sharpness of the fruit, and made sure that they didn’t taste too healthy, because that’s just not what you want from a cake. Now where’s my hot water bottle.