Raspberry and White Chocolate Cupcakes

Raspberry and white chocolate, a classic combination that remains popular throughout the year.

Last year when I reached out to restaurant chefs to demonstrate famous dishes for me, such as Tzatziki and Samosas, I’ve started reaching out to avid bakers.

Recently I moved to Hockley in Essex and tracked down Sue Field, owner of Finesse Cakes, who lives a stone’s throw away. Are you arty? I’m not. My monkey drawing looks like a mouse and a horse looks like an alien. Even Sudan the elephant, paints better than I do.

In stark contrast you get these really fantastic artists who create works with such ease and with a great eye for detail. One of them is Sue, just check out her gallery of wedding cakes. She bakes them with a range of flavours and gracefully helped me out with three cupcake recipes. Below is a cake that she was working on when I came over for the photo shoot.

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Here we go. It’s always a good idea to measure out all the ingredients before baking or cooking.

We need some flour, sugar, butter and egg.

Very quickly I realised, in contrast to shooting food step-by-step, doing it for baking quickly gets boring.

As always, we’ll just about always need …. you guessed it … flour, sugar, butter and egg. So after the following three cupcake recipes, my focus would be less on step-by-step and more on techniques to get stuff done.

Don’t forget to pre-heat your oven to 175°C/350°F/gas mark 5. Mix the butter and sugar together until it turns into a lighter colour.

Here’s a handy trick. Instead of pouring in all the eggs at once, add just one egg at a time along with a spoonful of flour to stop it curdling. When it’s incorporated into the batter, add the next egg and spoonful of flour and so on. This makes the cupcake mix lighter . The remaining flour should be mixed in at a slow speed. The end result is that your cupcakes will rise better.

You can use fresh or frozen raspberries. Depending on the season you might be better off using frozen raspberries because they are picked at their prime and quickly frozen whereas out of season fresh raspberries are tasteless thanks to the many miles they are shipped from a foreign country.

If you’re using frozen raspberries, zap them in the microwave and give them a stir. If you don’t like pips, strain the mixture.

Add it to the mix.

Don’t forget the all important white chocolate chips!

What you’ll end up with is a pale pink batter.

Here is another clever trick I learned from Sue. Until now I’ve always grappled with getting equal amounts into each cupcake case. Solution? Use an ice-cream scoop!

These babies are ready for the oven.

Simply beautiful. Now they need icing.

Soften the butter for the icing. Gently mix in the icing sugar, careful to create clouds of sugary dust, which will delight the kids of course. You can use a hand mixer which will make the job much easier. For larger quantities use a food mixer.

Place the butter icing in a piping bag and pipe swirls onto the cakes.

Decorate using your creativity – anything from using fresh raspberries, sprinkles and chocolate.

I hope you enjoyed this recipe – more cupcake recipes are coming soon!

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Raspberry and White Chocolate Cupcakes

Prep 15 minutes

Cook 20 minutes

Total 35 minutes

Servings 12

Author: Michelle Minnaar

A classy addition to any kind of afternoon tea.

Ingredients

• 130g self-raising flour
• 130g caster sugar
• 130g butter or margarine
• 5ml (1 tsp) baking powder
• 2 large eggs
• 60g fresh or frozen raspberries
• 90g white chocolate
• 250g unsalted butter
• 500g icing sugar

Instructions

1. Pre-heat oven to 175°C/350°F/gas mark 5 and place appropriate number of muffin cases in a muffin tray.
2. Measure out butter and sugar into same bowl and cream together until well mixed and turns lighter in colour.
3. Measure out flour into a separate bowl and add the baking powder – gently stir together.
4. Add 1 egg to the creamed butter and sugar along with a tablespoon of the flour and mix well.
5. Repeat step 4 with the other egg.
6. Chop the raspberries until they have turned to a liquid.
7. Chop the chocolate into small chunks.
8. Gently stir in the remaining flour, raspberries and white chocolate.
9. Scoop mixture into cases up to about half full.
10. Place the mixture in the oven for approximately 15-20 minutes. Check after 15 minutes to see if cooked. Cakes will be cooked when they are springy and return to shape when lightly pressed on top.
11. Remove cakes from the tin and place them on a wire rack to cool completely before decorating.
12. For the butter icing you first need to soften the butter.
13. Carefully add icing sugar to avoid clouds of icing dust.
14. Mix until fully incorporated and butter icing becomes whiter.
15. Using a large star nozzle, pipe swirls of butter icing onto the cakes.
16. Decorate with a fresh raspberry, grated white chocolate, edible sprinkles or any other edible decorations as desired. Cover and refrigerate any left over butter icing.

Recipe Notes

Serve with risotto Milanese, buttered pasta or polenta.Serve at an afternoon tea.

Courses Dessert

Cuisine English

Nutrition Facts

Serving Size 117.1g

Amount Per Serving
Calories 527
% Daily Value
Total Fat 28.5g		44%
	Saturated Fat 16.3g	82%
Sodium 50mg		2%
Total Carbohydrates 64.7g		22%
	Dietary Fiber 0.7g	3%
	Sugars 51.5g
Protein 2.9g		6%

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.

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