Peanut Butter and Jam Cupcakes

The world has seen many classic couples; Romeo and Juliet, fish and chips, Ben and Jerry, chocolate and chocolate.  This week I decided to explore one such dynamic duo, specifically, one inspired by the culinary geniuses of America: peanut butter and jam.  Such perfect flavouring deserves a perfect medium through which to express its greatness, and what better than the small but mighty cupcake?  

I used the peanut butter cupcake recipe in my tasty new book, Love Food: The Cupcake.  This was supposed to yield sixteen lovely, golden, peanutty cupcakes, but I ended up with fifteen.  I suppose mine were extra large lovely, golden, peanutty cupcakes.  They were extra large, anyway.  Once they had cooled down, I cut a small cone-shaped chunk out of the top and filled the space with as much strawberry preserve as I could jam in before replacing the wedge of cake.

 For the icing, I used the Hummingbird Bakery’s vanilla icing, with two heaped teaspoons of strawberry jam mixed in with a spoon at the end.  As I am currently without a pallet knife (they are on my birthday wish list, the first time any cooking accessory has featured) I piled this on with a spoon and smoothed it out, leaving it a little rough.  I would like to pretend that this was because it looks nice with the big brown peanuts, but it was actually because spoons are not as effective at smoothing out icing as pallet knifes.  I filled a bowl with peanuts and dipped the top of the cakes in them, leaving them with an unhealthily healthy topping.

The famous flavour team did not fail.  The cupcakes tasted very strongly of peanuts, so they are a miss if you don’t really like them that much – but then, if you do not like peanuts very much, you probably will not choose to make these.  The jam in the middle was, I am told, a tasty surprise; the sweetness worked well with the peanuts, and the jam-flavoured icing was sweet without being overpowering.

This delicious double act has joined forces with the humble cupcake to form a tasty new take on an old favourite.  It seems that while some good things result from a perfect pairing, really good things undeniably come in threes. 

Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes and Mini Sponges

A few happy coincidences occurred to bring these into existence.  Firstly, I found out that my housemates like cake; but then again, in all honesty, who doesn’t.  Perhaps less predictably, they also like strawberries.  In the final happy twist of fate, the farmers market on campus is selling these sweet, juicy, big red strawberries that taste like heaven in fruit form.  These were all the excuses I needed to whip out The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook and make these old favourites again.

There was a slight glitch.  When the cupcakes came out of the oven, they also came out of the cases.  It might have been something to do with the new cases - cheerful colours with white polka dots – but the faithful old white ones also let me down.  This suggests that it was the mixture itself.  The strawberries were extra ripe and a bit squishy, which could have made the cases slip off.  In any case, while some behaved themselves and stayed put it was clear that a rescue mission was in order.

I had never iced cupcakes in that pretty, delicate, swirly way; I usually just slap mounds of it on until there’s a satisfactory cake to icing ratio.  The first few cupcakes were a bit of an experiment, with lopsided results, and the last few were not much better, but with a coating of forgiving digestive biscuits and two well-placed strawberry quarters, they almost looked refined.  Now for the rescue operation.  I decided to make them look like mini strawberry sponge cakes.  I turned them out of the cases so the strawberries were on the top and then covered these in piped icing, digestives and strawberry quarters.  They almost looked deliberate; delicate treats for garden parties, picnics and chilly October days.

So how do you show your supremely supportive, downright delightful and entirely excellent housemates your appreciation?  While others may choose some form of interpretive dance, for me the solution is a piece of cake.  Or maybe just a strawberry.

For Grace, Jonny, Miriam and Tom

White Chocolate and Strawberry Jam Muffins

I’m told that it is socially acceptable to eat muffins for breakfast, even if they contain very breakfast-unfriendly things.  My love for chocolate is well-documented, and while I approve of chocolate mixed into breakfast things – Coco Pops, Nutella, Coco Pops Munchers – I cannot reconcile lumps of it for breakfast.  However, I decided to put my personal feelings aside and make something that people could eat at breakfast, lunch or dinner.  Or even brunch.  So I settled on muffins; but what kind?  Chocolate seemed obvious (at least to me) and something healthy.  OK, so jam is not that healthy, but it contains fruit and gives lovely gooey centre.

I used the Hummingbird bakery’s recipe for blueberry muffins, then mixed in about half a jar of jam and folded in 200g of chopped up white chocolate.  I spooned the mixture into cases then added a teaspoonful of jam to each one, and popped them in the oven.

They did taste of strawberry jam, so that much was a success.  The problem was that the jam and chocolate chunks sunk to the bottom of the muffins and stubbornly remained there while the rest of the cake obediently left the case.  In fairness, a combination of jam and chocolate doesn’t taste bad, but a combination of jam, chocolate and cake tastes better.  Next time, I will add the jam after the cakes have cooked, in order to guarantee gooey goodness at the centre.  

So they were a miss in terms of the ingredients staying in the cake, but the flavours worked well, turning it into something a bit like a glorified jam sandwich.  And they’re socially acceptable at whatever time of day; right?

Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes

I made these a while ago in July using the Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcake recipe from Tarek Malouf and the Hummingbird Bakers.  They have the delicious cream cheese icing and suggested topping of digestive biscuits from the same book, and I added quartered strawberries to finish.  Perfect to munch on while watching the tennis, they have strawberries in the bottom which gives the rest of the cake a lovely strawberry flavour.

The recipe tells you to use 200g of digestive biscuits for decoration - nearly all of a small packet.  I wouldn't recommend this, as even with generous toppings we were left with half a freezer bag of biscuit crumbs.  I would suggest that you start with only one or two biscuits, and break more up if you need them, which is common sense anyway.

These were a great hit with the family (I've been asked to make them again a couple of times) and I would recommend the recipe to any strawberry lovers out there looking for a taste of summer.