Strawberries and malteser cupcakes

Sounds like a strange mixture, doesn't it? Well, unluckily or luckily (depending on your taste!) this is not one cupcake, but two. Strawberry cupcakes and malteser cupcakes. Yes, I was a bit busy this weekend!

I had a small BBQ with friends on Saturday to celebrate my birthday some 10 days late. We have beeen talking about having a BBQ for years now, but never gotten around to it, but now we finally managed to get our act together! The occasion clearly needed cupcakes!

The supermarkets are filled with strawberries as of late and since strawberries are one of my favourite fruits it was only natural that I made some strawberry cupcakes! Last year I made these for a friend:

Strawberry cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting and a strawberry and toffee crown decoration





They were really good, but I wanted to have a frosting that contained strawberry and vanilla to get a strawberry cream taste, so I used the cinnamon frosting I used for the red velvet cupcakes without the cinnamon and added some strawberry puree. Next time I want to use a bit more puree to get a stronger pink colour and add some extra vanilla in the puree to make use of the full strawberry flavour. I find that the strawberries in the supermarkets aren't sweet enough here compared to the lovely Norwegian strawberries, so sugar or vanilla brings out the taste of the strawberries.







I also created my very own recipe for Malteser cupcakes. Ever since I saw on Baked's fanpage on Facebook that they had a photo of a malteser cupcakes from Hummingbird Bakery in London I decided that was a flavour I had to try to create. I mashed some Maltesers and added to a chocolate batter I created and the result was very moist and chocolately flavoured cupcakes. I couldn't find normal malt milk powder in the shop so used an instant chocolate malt drink powder, I guess it didn't make too much of a difference, but they did taste different from my normal chocolate cupcakes.

The frosting somehow got more compact and harder than I expected so I was very unhappy with the frosting this time, it was actually difficult to squeeze it out from the nozzle. Will keep that in mind till the next time!



As a birthday gift from my parents I got a cupcake stand which I finally got to use. Unfortunately I took the photos in a hurry and didn't think of moving all non-cupcake items out of the frame, so this isn't a very good picture. I think I'll blame the Pimms for the forgetfulness!

Lavender cupcakes

It has somewhat taken me forever to continue this blog. I haven't stopped baking cupcakes though.

I am ridiculously proud of most of my cupcakes, so I think most of them deserve their own blog entry. I'll try to keep it short and sweet with some photos showing the cupcakes and my progress.


After the raving reviews of my daughter's baptism cupcakes, I tried a rather more complicated vanilla cupcake with a lavender cream filling and lime cream cheese frosting. I was inspired by Chockylit's lavender cupcakes, but the lavender cream failed spectacularly compared to the instructions, so I improvised and made my own lavender cream. I dare say it is probably better and it gives just the most perfect hint and taste of lavender, not too little and not too overpowering. Paired with the lush lime cream cheese frosting it is my most popular cupcake yet!

Here are some photos of my lavender cupcakes:



These have tiny handmade butterfly decorations made of homemade Marshmallowfondant (by that I mean that even the marshmallow was made from scratch!)



These are decorated with small crystalised violet petals, which I found on a trip to London.



These are decorated with homemade marshmallowfondant butterflies with blue sugar for a sparkly, glittery effect.



And finally the icing on the cake so to speak, lavender cupcakes with a handmade sugarpaste (homemade!) princess crown made for a little princess' birthday.