Raspberry Cupcakes

Ahhh....cupcakes anyone? Okay. I think I hear a lot of oohs and aahs....or am I fantasizing...!!?

With flavors abundant and endless ideas for decorative frosting, cupcakes have become gourmet food. Hip, chic and glamorous. And oh, so personalized. Appealing to all age groups, across borders, without discrimination. They are a joy to look at, and evermore so delicious to eat. Generations ago, it was the food of just young children. With rise in popularity, however, it’s not an unusual sight to see devoted adults queued up in long lines outside boutique cupcake bakeries to snap up their favorite flavors.

So, if you have never baked a cupcake at home, it’s high time you started. Because, they've moved from food to art....and the trend is here to stay. Trendy or not, I particularly love making cupcakes at home for the fabulous aromas wafting around the house. The lure of warm, bite size cakes straight out of the oven is too overpowering for me to resist. That said, my kids and hubby are not so cupcake crazy as me. I am, on the other hand, happy to indulge my appetite to glorious excess, when it comes to these deliciously small, sweet and soft food. Oh my sweet tooth!

This is a simple cupcake recipe. The use of raspberry, king of berries, for a subtly tart overtone worked brilliantly. The fact that raspberries top the list of antioxidant food is an added advantage. The cakes came out deliciously sweet with a hint of tartness that we absolutely loved. Note that I kept it simple and skipped the frosting completely. Mainly to reduce our intake of sugar and calories. No, we are not on a diet--just trying to eat healthy, whenever possible. And they were tasty all by themselves. But hey, you don’t have to skip this step. Give free rein to your creativity and come up with tantalizing toppings to make these yummy morels even more irresistible!

Though baking cupcakes is simple and easy, I'm sharing a few general tips for novices. Use paper liners for ease of handling. You get them in different sizes. Besides, they effortlessly glam up the cakes. Take your pick from umpteen designs depending on how simple or glamorous you fancy them. However, if you don’t have any liners handy, bake your cakes in greased pans—grease pans with butter, cooking spray or any other fat, and then lightly flour the cups. You’ll notice that my cakes have risen just below the edge of the liner. This is because I filled the cups up to about half full. This can be persolanized to your preference. As a good rule of thumb, three-quarters will give cakes that have expanded outside the liner, whereas two-thirds will give cakes puffed up to the edge of the liner.

And oh, don’t be put off by the uneven browning of my cakes. I guess it’s got a lot to do with the hot spots in my electric oven. Whatever. The cakes were simply moreish. We enjoyed them with a good strong cuppa in the patio garden. Listening to the chirping of the birds, the sweet sound of wind chimes, and gazing at the gentle breeze ruffling the leaves of the pink bougainvilleas.

Raspberry Cupcakes

(adapted from Cupcakes Bite Size Treats)

Ingredients

170g (1 ½ cup) self raising flour

125g butter, softened

3 eggs

110ml (½ cup) milk

75g (2/3 cup) caster sugar

2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup fresh raspberries

Directions

Heat oven to 180C/350F/gas 4. Line the cupcake tray with paper liners. If you don’t have them handy, simply grease the cup in the pan with butter or cooking spray and then lightly flour the cups.

Tip all the ingredients except the berries into a bowl and beat with a hand-mixer on high speed for 3 minutes, scrapping batter from the sides of the bowl, until pale and smooth. Fold in the raspberries. Scoop the mixture into cupcake liners, up to about half full. You would need about 24 cupcake liners.

Bake for 15 minutes or until a skewer poked in comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool for 15 minutes, then transfer onto a wire rack to cool completely. If you not using a liner, you might need to released the cakes from the pans using a toothpick or knife around the perimeter.

Serve dusted with icing sugar, if you like.