Marmalade Cupcakes (Gluten Free)

Adapted from the Breakfast of Champions column in the Saturday Guardian magazine. I loved the look of these prima ballerina's favourite breakfast muffins, but wanted to make them gluten free... and decrease the sugar load by quite a bit. They are light and fluffy, more cupcake than muffin texture, with a rich, tangy marmalade flavour. Paddington would most definintely approve!

80g cornflour
70g ground almonds
15g brown rice flour
5g potato flour (if you don't have it just use 5g more of cornflour)
1 tablespoon baking power
60g caster sugar

75g cooled melted butter
1 large egg
Zest and juice of one orange
75ml milk
130g marmalade

Makes 9

Heat the oven to 170C fan and put muffin cases in 9 holes of a 12-hole muffin tray.

Combine the dry ingredients, crumbling them together with your fingers, getting rid of any lumps.
Briefly whisk the wet ingredients together to combine, pour into the dry along with the marmalade, and mix briefly by hand until just combined (over-mixing makes for tough, dense muffins).

Fill the cases two-thirds full, and bake for 15-20 minutes until a tooth pick comes out clean.

These are DIVINE warm... they are quite grainy and dry the next day.

Hot Cross Buns... with a side of Food Blogging Events

I have no time for baking I'm afraid, real life is FAR too busy... Oh except for Hot Cross Buns! How I love that seasonal treat - it's so special to make something just once a year in these times when nothing is that sacred. I couldn't find my normal recipe (from Margaret Costa's Four Seasons Cookbook, so decided to try) - and of course adapt - I just can't help myself! - Nigella's from her Feast book, that I had photocopied many years ago. You'll have to wait till next year for me to share them!! But here's a pic to whet your appetite!

I am just finishing off my third book, The Rainbow Way: Cultivating Creativity in the Midst of Motherhood  and will be sending it off to the publishers at the end of the month (you can see an extract from it this week over on my personal blog, Dreaming Aloud) so you'll have to excuse my relative quiet here at the mo.

But that's not all, oh no!

I have been helping Darina Allen with her blog prior to the Ballymaloe LitFest of Food and Wine which is almost upon us.

I will be on a panel on Food Writing for the Digital Generation at the LitFest, alongside Caroline Hennessy, co-founder of the Irish Food Bloggers, Michael Kelly, founder of Grow Your Own Ireland, and Aoife Carrigey of Holy Mackerel. I will also be answering questions in the next session which is all about self publishing, sonething which I've been immersed in for nearly two years now!

Then, on 18th May I will be teaching Food Blogging at Ballymaloe Cookery School - this half day course is perfect for those wanting to start out, and those who have recently started but are wanting to grow their blog.

And finally I am delighted to share that a piece of my food writing, The Taste of Cherry Blossom, has been accepted for BlogHer's new anthology entitled Roots: Where Food Comes from and Where it Takes Us, which this time focuses on Food and Traditions. It will be launched at their June conference in Chicago!

Busy times!

Butternut Orange Cupcakes

OK, OK, you've been wheedling me for the recipe. So I'm sharing it in my own words.

But I need you to be clear it comes, unadulterated, from Harry Eastwood's superb book Red Velvet and Chocolate Heartache. So try it. Love it. And then go straight out and buy the book! She has put a LOT of work into developing it.

These are gluten free. And butter and dairy free too if you change the butter icing for a water icing (icing sugar made into a paste with the orange juice).

Makes 12 regular size muffins

Cupcake mix

2 medium eggs
160 g caster sugar
200g butternut squash
2 tsp baking powder
100g rice flour (NOT ground rice)
100g ground almonds
1/4 tsp salt
juice and zest of 1 orange

Icing
200g icing (confectioners) sugar
75g soft unsalted butter
juice and zest of 1 orange

Preheat oven to 180C. Fill a 12 hole muffin tin with paper cases.

Using an electric whisk, beat the eggs and sugar together for 5 mins until light, creamy and quadrupled in size.

Peel the butternut squash, this uses about one third of an average size one. Remove the stringy bits and the seeds. Then start grating. By hand. Do not use a food processor. Use the finest holes on your normal box grater or Cuisipro grater. This will take some time! Do not do it in advance or it will dry out, and you need the moisture.

Add to the egg mix, along with the other ingredients. Using a spatula stir until fully incorporated.

Spoon into the paper cases and cook for 20 mins. They are ready when risen and golden. Check after 15 mins.

Leave to cool fully before icing. At least 30 mins in a cool place.

Make the icing by whisking the butter and sugar with an electric whisk. Add all the zest, and as much juice as you can, without making it too runny. Ice and enjoy!

Vegetable Cupcakes

Eating the warm, orange scented cupcake marked a milestone. A bizarre claim for a  humble cupcake. But this was no ordinary cupcake. No ma'am, it was my portal to a new world. The world of vegetable cakes!

So I have finally moved from admiring this year's favourite Christmas present, Harry Eastwood's Red Velvet and Chocolate Heartache, a book full of gluten free, low fat, vegetable based cakes (see my review here) --to actually making them! That's one giant leap for womankind!

I have found it hard to get my head around them. You see, I have a weird phobia... There's lots of things that I love to eat but won't cook: chicken liver pate, seaweed dishes, and the latest addition to this list: cakes made from parsnip, turnip and aubergine. Because if I knew what was in there, then my head and taste buds would be doing battle.

And so I took a risk. Butternut based orange cup cakes. Sounds weird, right?

Grating the butternut was the downside, 20 mins hard graft on my lousy box grater (she advises doing it by hand, not in a food processor). The mix looked odd going into the cases. But coming out was fragrant and golden. Pure orange cake, nothing dodgy.

These got a universal thumbs up from assorted mamas and fussy kiddies from 2-8 year olds. No one guessed their secret. And with no butter, only two eggs and no wheat flour were nutritionally far superior to our normal cupcake recipe. Want the recipe? Then here it is!

My neighbour was so impressed, we're going to bake something together from the book next week- so we can share the grating!

Christmas Traditions: Fresh cranberry choc chip cookies

These are a recent Christmas tradition for me. A discovery from Rose Levy Beranbaum's festive book: Rose's Christmas Cookies. They are by necessity a seasonal treat in a world where you can have anything you want year round, as they require fresh cranberries which we can only get for a couple of weeks in early December. Frozen cranberries don't work and dried cranberries just don't cut it for these jewelled wonders.

Just a gentle suggestion, but you might want to double the quantities. That's if you're willing to share. But the heavenly smell wafting from the oven of chocolate, orange and toasted walnuts will mean that your secret won't be safe for long!

Makes 30

Preheat oven to 170C
50g walnuts, toasted
160g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
Zest of one orange, removed with potato peeler and finely chopped
75g granulated sugar
80g soft light brown sugar
110g soft butter
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
150g fresh cranberries
150g dark or white choc chips or chunks

Cream the sugars and butter with an electric whisk till light and fluffy. Add the egg, vanilla and orange zest. Add flour and baking soda, mix till combined. Chop the cranberries (the bigger they are, the juicier, and therefore soggier, the final cookies) and walnuts, add and stir by hand to combine.

Spoon mix out onto lined baking sheets, a heaped tablespoon for each. Don't overcrowd. It will make 30, so you will need to use 3-4 baking sheets.

Bake for about 12-15mins, turning the sheets halfway through cooking. They should be golden and still soft. Leave to cool for a couple of mins on the baking sheet before tranfering to a wire cooling rack.

Rhubarb buttermilk upside down cake with orange and cardamom

Woah what a mouthful of a title. and what a mouthful of a cake. You can just call it breakfast - like I did this morning and eat 3 slices! Treacly sharp rhubarb on a sweet, tender cake fragrant with cardamom. Combining three ideas: one from Darina Allen, one from Sarah Raven and an adapted buttermilk cake recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum's wonderous Cake Bible.