Spring has arrived in England; everywhere you look daffodils and crocuses are providing splashes of colour, brightening up gardens and roadsides. To celebrate the joys of spring, I thought that a nice brightly flavoured citrus dessert would be just the thing. And then… Maki announced that the theme of this month’s Is My Blog Burning was to be cupcakes. Well. What could be better than a lemon cupcake? Even a chocolate cupcake would have to work hard to beat that.

In the United Kingdom, we don’t have cupcakes. We have… fairy cakes. Tiny cakes of sponge (if you’re lucky, it’ll be moist sponge) served at children’s birthday parties. It is debatable whether a fairy would actually eat one. Classically topped with plain glace icing and a lurid glace cherry. If I’d known as a child, what luscious cupcakes were available on the other side of the Atlantic, I’d have revolted at my birthday parties until someone made the good stuff. Now that I’ve tasted cupcake heaven, will I ever be able to serve up plain old fairy cakes to my future children? I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it….

So, onto today’s IMBB: Triple-Lemon Cupcakes. What you can’t see in the picture above is the filling–a tart, voluptuous lemon curd. The cupcake is flavoured with a hefty amount of lemon zest (yet is not bitter) and is very moist; the icing (or frosting if you’re across the pond) has a generous amount of lemon juice which gives it a lovely tang. Despite all the citrus, this certainly isn’t health-food!

Whilst I was preparing all the components, I worried that it would be overkill. Could there be such a thing as too much lemon? I’m happy to report that this is not the case. Cake, curd and icing work extremely well together to create a delicious dessert.

I am now utterly converted to cupcakes, and I can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with! Thank-you, Maki!

Triple-Lemon Cupcakes

Adapted from several recipes.

Lemon Curd
80ml strained, fresh-squeezed lemon juice
3 large eggs
1 large egg yolk
100g caster sugar
110g unsalted butter, cut into small chunks
1 teaspoon lemon zest

Cupcake
225g plain flour
35g cornflour (cornstarch, NOT cornmeal)
OR 2 cups cake flour can replace flour & cornflour (unsifted, spoon and level method)
2 1/2 teaspoons double-action baking powder
3/4 teaspoon fine salt
90g unsalted butter
200g caster sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
zest of two lemons
250ml milk

Icing
approx 225g unsalted butter
approx 450g sieved icing sugar
juice of half a lemon
few drops vanilla extract

Lemon zest, decorative lemon slices, or whatever you want to use to decorate it.

The curd–whisk together the lemon juice, sugar, and eggs in a heatproof bowl. Add butter. Cook over a pan of simmering water, a bain marie, until the curd is thick and the whisk leaves a trail. Even though the curd will set further when its chilled, you want it to be thick initially so that it can be piped easily. Don’t panic if the butter seems to clot, keep whisking and all will be well eventually. I hesitate to give a time for cooking as this really depends on how aggressive you’re prepared to be with the temperature. If you wimp out, as I did, then you’ll be whisking mournfully for at least 15 minutes.

Strain the curd into a fresh bowl (to remove any shell, or stringy bits of egg white). Stir in the lemon zest. Leave to cool, then chill thoroughly. Overnight is best.

The cake–Preheat oven to Gas Mark 5/190C. Line two muffin tins with paper liners. Sift flour, cornflour, baking powder and salt together. Cream butter and sugar together until well blended. Beat in egg, vanilla extract and lemon zest (best to zest directly into the bowl). In three additions, add the milk and flour mixtures alternating between the two.

Divide the batter between the tins, filling each hole just over half-full. Bake for 18-20 minutes, until risen, springy and slightly golden. Cool 10 minutes in tins; transfer to wire rack and cool completely.

The icing–I eye-balled this. It’s a basic buttercream, nothing fancy. Cream butter until fluffy. Add in approximately double the weight of sifted icing sugar, beat until fluffy again. Add, spoonful by spoonful, enough lemon juice until the icing is tangy enough for your own tastes. Put a few drops of vanilla extract in too. Beat once more. If it’s too thick for piping, then add a few drops milk to thin it down.

Construction–using a melon-baller or a paring knife hollow out a hole in the center of each cupcake. Don’t go right to the bottom. The hole needs to be able to take about 2tbsp lemon curd. Snack on the scraps–cooks perks.

Using a disposable piping bag (or a ziplock plastic bag, fill then cut corner off), pipe the lemon curd into the hollows you’ve made. Don’t over-fill.

Using a star tip, pipe the icing decoratively on top of each cupcake.

Eat!

The cupcakes should hold, filled and iced, at room temperature for about four hours. Chilled, one day. Bring up to room temperature before serving. You should be able to freeze the filled but uniced cupcake for a couple of weeks.

I had a disastrous cooking session on Thursday when I decided to make my cookies for this month’s IMBB (hosted by Jennifer, she’s having a busy month!). I had decided to make some German Cinnamon Star Cookies from a recipe that I’d clipped out of a magazine a couple of years ago. The recipe looked quite reasonable (and beautiful – the cookies were supposed to have a snowy white baked meringue topping) and I couldn’t see any reason why it shouldn’t work, so I hunted high and low for some star cutters (this is a tale in it’s own right, and a lesson as to why you should call shops before you set out on a cold day) and went for it.

Alas, my cookies looked decidedly amaturish. I think a toddler could have done a better job – I bet the points wouldn’t have fallen off their stars…. The meringue topping was supposed to develop a crust which would allow you to cut the cookies cleanly; however, after letting the dough sit on the counter for the maximum of 3 hours my dough wasn’t exactly crusty. I let it sit for as long as I dared before giving in and just cutting it. The cookies looked thoroughly miserable, sitting on the baking sheet with trailing lines of meringue everywhere…. I had to stick the points back on the big stars I’d cut, and the shooting stars looked more like palm trees. At least the holly leaves looked vaguely recognisable.

The cookies did taste good once baked – there was a very strong cinnamon flavour in the base, toned down slightly with ground almonds and candied citrus peel with a lemon-y meringue on top. However, they just looked plain awful. Especially the ones that scorched in the second I looked away from the oven. And even worse than their looks, was the mess they left behind in the kitchen.

So, yesterday I decided to make something else. Something much less fiddly that definitely didn’t involve cutters. I wound up making “Phoebe’s Fabulous Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies” from the Friends Cookbook. If you’ve forgotten the episode (or have just never seen it), here’s what Phoebe has to say about her cookies:

PHOEBE: Ok, um, we haven’t known each other for that long a time, and, um, there are three things that you should know about me. One, my friends are the most important thing in my life, two, I never lie, and three, I make the best oatmeal raisin cookies in the world.

RACHEL: Ok, thanks Pheebs. Oh my God,

PHOEBE: I know.

RACHEL: Why have I never tasted these before?

PHOEBE: Oh, I don’t make them a lot because I don’t think it’s fair to the other cookies.

RACHEL: All right, well, you’re right, these are the best oatmeal cookies I’ve ever had.

PHOEBE: Which proves that I never lie.

So… a challenge! Were these really the best oatmeal-raisin cookies in the world? After making them I can tell you that it was the easiest and quickest cookie batter I’ve thrown together. It would have been much faster if I wasn’t jotting down metric weights at the same time.

The cookies had a deliciously crisp exterior but were gorgeously chewy in the middle. Like an armadillo (Dave’s valuable observation). The raisins hadn’t dried out at all and were still nice and plump. The overall flavour was much more complex than the short ingredient list would suggest, it tasted as if there was a subtle spice blend in the cookies. Maybe my kitchen has a haze of spices floating through the air? At any rate, they were a definite hit! Very more-ish too.

I can’t say for sure that these are the best oatmeal-raisin cookies in the world, but they’re certainly the best ones I’ve tasted or made.

Phoebe’s Fabulous Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies, from “Cooking With Friends”

12 tablespoons (175g) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup (160g) firmly packed light brown sugar
2/3 cup (130g) white sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups (170g) rolled oats
1 1/4 cup (160g) plain flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups (200g) raisins

Preheat oven to 375F/190C/Gas Mark 5.

Cream butter and sugars together until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla extract; beat until well combined.

In a separate bowl combine oats, flour, soda, baking powder and salt. Mix into butter mixture until just combined. Stir in raisins.

Drop the dough by heaped tablespoons onto ungreased baking sheets, leaving a 2″ gap between each mound. [I used a dessert-spoon and made ovals rather than balls (quenelles, if we're being posh) as I heard that this caused the dough to spread less.]

Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden brown. Cool on sheet for at least a minute before transferring to a rack.

Cinnamon Star Cookies

Makes about 40.

3 egg whites
2 tablespoons lemon juice
350g icing sugar
100g mixed peel, chopped finely
300g ground almonds
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon lemon zest, from an unwaxed lemon preferably

Whisk the egg whites with the lemon juice and a pinch of salt. Gradually add all of the icing sugar until stiff peaks are formed. Divide the mixture: one-third of the meringue needs to be reserved for the topping. Place in separate bowl and cover tightly.

Stir the peel into the meringue. Add 250g of the ground almonds (reserve the rest), cinnamon and lemon zest. Mix well with a spatula. You may need to use your hands to incorporate everything. Cover bowl and chill for 45 minutes.

Knead dough a couple of times. Sprinkle the worksurface with a layer of the reserved ground almonds. Roll the dough out to a thickness of 1/2cm. Evenly spread the reserved meringue on top with a pallete knife. Leave for at least one hour and up to three. The meringue needs to form a crust.

Preheat oven to Gas Mark 4 / 180C.

Dip a 5cm star cutter into cold water to stop the meringue and paste sticking and cut out star shapes – as close together as possible to minimise waste.

Place the shapes on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes on the lowest shelf in the oven. The top should remain white and the base should be slightly brown. Leave to cool. Store in a biscuit tin for up to 4 weeks.

This month’s edition of “Is My Blog Burning” is hosted by Donna of There’s A Chef In My Kitchen. This months theme is wines and spirits which is perfect timing as I’ve just decanted my home-made strawberry liqueur!

I really wanted to showcase the wonderful flavour of the liqueur (intense strawberry and burnt caramel flavour), so the first thing that sprang to mind was scenting and flavouring a crème brûlée with some to create a very adult version of strawberries and cream. Unfortunately the rest of my brain kicked in at this point and I ended up almost drowning in ideas ranging from boozy trifles to layers of strawberry and white chocolate mousse…. Eventually I came full circle last night and settled upon the crème brûlée.

The liqueur flavour was very subtle, just gently scented and flavoured which worked perfectly with the explosions of flavour from the sliced berries. The berries managed to soak up quite a lot of additional flavour from the liqueur (I felt obliged to taste them before macerating them, and afterwards too!) so they were particularly good. Unfortunately the berries all floated to the top once the custard was poured in which spoilt the look a little; next time I’d be tempted to halve the sugar and weigh down the berries with a spoonful of strawberry conserve. All in all, a successful experiment!

Strawberry Liqueur Crème brûlée

Serves 2

1/2 pint fresh strawberries
2 tablespoons strawberry liqueur
2 large egg yolks
2 tablespoons caster sugar
200ml double cream
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
Demerara sugar

Preheat oven to 160C/Gas Mark 3.
Place two ramekins in a roasting pan.

Clean, hull and quarter the strawberries. Place them in a bowl with the liqueur and leave them to macerate for 15 minutes. Drain juice into a bowl and save.
Meanwhile, heat the cream to boiling point and leave to cool for 5 minutes.
In a bowl, lightly beat the yolks with the sugar and vanilla extract. Try not to generate too much foam. Slowly whisk in the warm cream and reserved liqueur.

Strain through a fine sieve into a jug (this removes any foam generated and also any stray bits of egg whites).
Evenly divide the strawberries between the ramekins and press down firmly. Pour cream over gently. The strawberries will probably float up to the top no matter how firmly you’ve pressed them down.

Pour boiling water into the roasting pan half-way up the sides of the ramekins and bake for 45 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely. Refridgerate overnight.

At serving time, sprinkle the demerara sugar on top and caramelise with a blowtorch for a few minutes until melted.
Garnish with a strawberry and serve.

I’ve had a lot of fun making my cake for this month’s “Is My Blog Burning?” day, hosted by the lovely Renee. I’ve owned a beginner’s piping set for a few months now, but I’ve only used it to pipe macaron’s thus far. So, I was looking for a cake where I could pipe pretty things and make a nice fancy looking cake. After some musing about flavours, I decided to make a liqueur cake, with buttercream icing that I could do pretty things with. After further thought, I decided that a cake flavoured with Bailey’s would be rather nice, especially as I had a huge bottle of Bailey’s to hand.

My original intent was to devise my own recipe, but all such thoughts went out of my head when I stumbled over the recipe for Bailey’s Irish Cream Cake from “Karen’s In The Country” in Colorado. The flavour combination of cake, creamy Bailey’s filling, rich coffee buttercream and chocolate fudge seemed utterly dreamy. And also (perhaps) teetering on the edge of being just too intense. I must admit, I do still feel a bit guilty about making such an extravagent cake, especially as there are only two of us. On the other hand, is eating cake for breakfast really such a hardship?

Despite its good looks, the cake was actually quite simple to make. It just involves many steps, but all of which are nice and simple. Plus, I spent almost all day on Friday putting it together, so I was able to take my time and have fun.

White cake vs Sponge Cake
White cake isn’t something that we make in the UK and although I did have a recipe for it from a CIA (Culinary Institute America) book, I didn’t feel confident in trying to scale it down from feeding 24 to fitting in an 8″ cake tin. So… I used Delia’s All-In-One sponge cake instead. In retrospect, I’m wondering if I should have just tried brazening it out with Angel Cake, but I’ve always been told that Angel Cake can only be made in a tube cake tin. Is this really a hard and fast rule?

Bailey’s Bavarian Cream Filling
The original recipe called for a very quick and convenient filling based around vanilla instant pudding. After discovering that Vanilla Instant Pudding isn’t available in the UK (thanks to Jackie), except via specialist importers from the States, I decided to be terribly brave and make my own filling from scratch. Gordon Ramsay’s Dessert Cookbook provided me with a basic recipe for Bavoris (Bavarian Cream), so I decided to use that and add as much Bailey’s as tasted good to the mixture. Much to my surprise it turned out to be very easy and fun. This was also my first time working with leaf gelatine which was huge amounts of fun. Squeezing water out of soaked leaves of gelatine is like squidging some sort of alien seaweed in your hands. Loads of fun!

I then added Bailey’s to taste, and stopped after 6 tablespoons when the taste was just verging on being too strong. As flavours dull when they are chilled, I thought that this would leave it with the perfect amount of flavour. Happily, I was bang on and the filling tastes wonderful. I have about one third of it left over in a bowl and I’m quite happily snacking on that when I pass the fridge. Mercifully, I’m already plump otherwise I’d have tremendous guilt even thinking about the amount of fat in this cake…

The Bavoris/Bavarian Cream has an interesting texture. Its definitely set, but its a very refined set. Its not rock hard like jellies can be, yet its firm enough to be cut and still have a nice delicate wobble to it. You could definitely experiment with other flavours of bavoris and buttercream to make a very summery cake. Or just halve the quantities, invite two other people around and make individual bavoris of different flavours… Hmm, I may have to try this out!

Here’s my Bavoris recipe:

200ml whole milk
200ml double cream
100g caster sugar
6 large egg yolks
4 sheets leaf gelatine

Place the milk, cream, and 1 tablespoon of the sugar in a medium pan and bring up to boiling point.
Meanwhile, whisk the sugar and egg yolks together until thick and pale. The mixture should get to a ribbon stage.
Very slowly, pour approximately a third of the hot creamy milk onto the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Pour this back into the saucepan with the rest of the milk, whisking well as you do so to ensure that the egg does not scramble.
Place the gelatine in a bowl of cold water to soften for five minutes. Return the pan to the lowest heat possible and stir constantly for five minutes. The custard will thicken slightly, and will coat the back of a wooden spoon.
Remove the pan from the heat. Squeeze the excess water from the gelatine. Carefully whisk the gelatine into the hot custard until dissolved.
Pass the bavoris base through a fine sieve into a clean bowl. Leave to cool to room temperature, stirring once or twice. There will be some foam on the top, but this will dissapear once the bavoris is finished.

To complete the Bailey’s Bavoris filling:

6 tablespoons Bailey’s Irish Cream, or to taste
200ml double cream

Once the bavoris base is cool, stir in Bailey’s Irish cream to taste.
Cover with clingfilm and chill until on the point of setting around the edges. I found this took 20 minutes.
Whisk the double cream until soft peaks form. Err on the side of floppy here, as firmly whisked cream incorporates poorly, and leaves firm blobs of cream throughout the bavoris. I wish at least one cookbook had warned about this!!
Return to the fridge until the bavoris has thickened up again. I left it to chill for approximately 15 minutes this time. Carefully fill cake.

First Stage of Construction – Filling the Cake
Once the bavoris was sufficiently thick (I defined this by the texture being approximately as thick as softly whipped cream and also, it didn’t run everywhere when I placed a spoonful on a plate), I started the most nervewracking part of construction. As I don’t own an 8″ springform tin, I had to use the alternative construction method… clingfilm. Who would have thought it could be so strong? After placing the bottom layer of the cake onto a slightly larger cake tin base, I tore off a very long piece of clingfilm and folded it in half lengthways. I then wrapped it around the base of the cake and squidged the ends together. I left a bit of leeway so that I would be able to ease the top layer of cake over the filling without disturbing the clingfilm and sending cream everywhere. Astonishingly, this worked!!! Only a tiny amount of cream escaped the centre of the cake and although one side bulged a little, I judged it a success. I made doubly sure that things would stay in place by wrapping it with another four layers of clingfilm, pulling those layers increasingly tighter around the cake. Clingfilm rocks! The heavily clingfilmed cake then went into the fridge to chill. It was probably done after two hours, but I ended up leaving it for 5 hours, as I got distracted by (a) cleaning up the kitchen and (b) cooking dinner (Nigella’s Supper Onion pie which was utterly fab).

Chocolate Fudge Topping
I made this whilst waiting for the bavoris base to chill. I got bored, and I figured it was best to get on and do something rather than sit and stare at a bowl of custard. This was so easy to make! I just substituted golden syrup in place of corn syrup and then followed the instructions. It looked wonderfully glossy and tasted good too, so I poured it into a bowl and set aside.

Second Stage of Construction – Icing the Cake
By this point, it was about 10pm. Admittedly, I did start at around 11am, but still… how many people were spending their Friday night icing a cake? Anyhoo, butter icing is always very easy and very tasty. I’ve never piped with it before, so this was already a fun challenge. Using my KitchenAid, I whipped up a huge batch of very fluffy, smooth buttercream. The very strong coffee was simply 1 1/2 tablespoons of Nescafe Gold Blend (apparently this is the same as Taster’s Choice?) mixed with 4 tablespoons hot water and slowly trickled it in after I sieved in the sugar. The recipe itself didn’t call for sieving the sugar, but you should always do this for a good smooth buttercream.

After much peering at instructions and icing tips, I finally decided which one was the star tip (they all begin to look the same at 10pm) and set up the icing bag. Its a very large icing bag, but even this huge bag couldn’t accomodate all the icing at once. So, I plonked myself down in front of the tv with a plate of cake, icing bag propped up in a glass, and prepared to strip the cake of the clingfilm.

Clingfilm was still my friend. The bavoris was still exactly how I had left it, and was nicely set. It didn’t even threaten to detatch from the cake when I experimentally prodded it. Yay! After taking a deep breath I started piping from the plate up to the top lining paper of the cake and to my great surprise it looked good. And to even greater surprise, it stayed put. Greatly encourage by this, I carried on icing round the cake. Is it me, or does the icing remind you of cacti? The rosettes on the top were equally as easy. Just press down, squeeze and lift. Very, very pretty.

Last but not least…
is the chocolate fudge topping. I microwaved the topping for 30 seconds, which was a tad too long. So I then spent a few minutes stirring it until it stopped boiling. I was terrified that it would burn a hole straight through the buttercream rosettes. Once it seemed to have cooled slightly, I poured it on and smoothed it out with the back of a teaspoon. Actually, it didn’t need much smoothing at all; just a little coaxing to ensure that it butted up against the rosettes fully.

I then chilled it down for 30 minutes before wrapping yet more clingfilm around it and leaving it overnight. I gorged somewhat on left-over buttercream, and really couldn’t face anymore sugar by 11pm. I have no idea how I managed to sleep on both a sugar and caffeine high, tinged with a bit of smugness too…

And how does it taste?
Absolutely amazing! I’m happily munching on a slice as I’m typing up this entry. The sponge cake is a little dry and nowhere near as fluffy as I’d hoped it would turn out. Next time (and yes, I would definitely do this again, but for a party!) I would try making an Angel food cake to get a fluffier cake and also to get nice white layers of cake for more of a contrast when the cake is cut. The filling works very well to moisten the cake and the flavour explosion when you get a mouthful of cake, filling and buttercream is awesome. I’m very happy with this cake.

This is my belated contribution to Alberto’s proposal for a blog cooking day – sorry Alberto! I dreamt up this soup a few years ago out of sheer necessity (i.e. the cupboards were bare) and liked it so much that I’ve made it a few times since.

Its quite a thick soup, although easily thinned down with chicken stock to suit individual tastes), and has a lovely velvety texture created by the pureed beans and leeks which is broken up nicely by the reserved beans. As an added bonus, its quite healthy too! The soup can be made with either chicken or vegetable stock – chicken stock does give a much richer flavour and seems to create a nicer texture too.

Tuscan Bean and Garlic Soup

Olive oil (you will only need about a teaspoon)
224g (8oz) leeks sliced thinly. Use only the whites if you want a very pale and elegant soup. I used a bit of both, hence the somewhat interesting colour
3 large cloves garlic (peeled but not crushed).
1 – 1 1/2 pints chicken or vegetable stock
2 cans (~400g cans) of cannellini beans, drained
2 tbsp chopped Italian (flat-leaf) parsley

Heat the pan and pour in a touch of olive oil.
Saute the leeks gently for about four minutes, then add the garlic and cook for a further three or four minutes (don’t let the garlic brown, or it will taste horrid).
Add the stock and half the beans. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
Puree the mixture in a blender. Return to the pan, add the rest of the beans, season and simmer for 20 minutes. You may need to add extra chicken stock if the consistency is very thick. Just dilute to your own preference.
Stir in the parsley and serve.