hen's night cupcakes

I couldn't let V.'s hen's night last weekend go by without making cupcakes. As we were seeing "Puppetry of the Penis" it was pretty easy to decide on the decorations. I've had the penis moulds since the early 80's. There used to be a furniture shop in the next suburb that sold X-rated chocolate moulds from under the counter. How straitlaced we were back then. Stuff like this is displayed all over the place now in gift shops but was considered pretty risque then.


We had a fun night with lots of laughs. Now for the two week countdown to the wedding!

lemon lemon cupcakes

With the house auction coming up in less than a month and the first Open for Inspection looming next weekend, I've thrown myself into a cleaning frenzy. It's a necessary evil but oh, how I hate housework, especially tedious jobs like washing down doors and cupboards. So yesterday I took a break from the rubber gloves and bucket and made a batch of cupcakes...

Lemon lemon cupcakes with cream cheese frosting (makes 12)

All ingredients should be at room temperature:

175g plain flour
150g caster sugar
1 1/2 tspns baking powder
pinch salt
125g softened unsalted butter, cut into 1-cm cubes
2 large eggs
120ml ml milk
finely grated rind of a large lemon

Preheat oven to 160 C°. Line a cupcake pan with paper liners. Whisk the milk and eggs lightly together. In the bowl of an electric mixer combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt and mix on low speed until combined. Add butter and half the egg/milk mixture and beat on medium speed for 2 mins. Scrape down sides of bowl and add the remaining egg mix in 2 batches, beating for 20 secs. each. Using an icecream scoop measure mixture evenly into the liners and bake for 20 - 25 mins. or until a toothpick comes out clean. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Cream cheese frosting:

Beat together 125g cream cheese (use straight from fridge) and 35g butter (softened) until smooth.
Gradually add 1 cup sifted pure icing sugar and rind of a large lemon, beating until smooth. Spread over cakes and serve at room temperature.

vegan cupcakes

For the past week we've been living in the front (carpeted) half of the house while the timber floor in the back half has been sanded and polished. The combination of the extreme heatwave, the fumes from the floor and having no kitchen or computer have made for a pretty hellish week. All back to normal now so was finally able to make Katie some vegan cupcakes as a thank-you for the the farewell song!
I sat and copied out a recipe in Borders (which I reckon is a far lesser sin than taking the book into the cafe which you are allowed to do) from The joy of vegan baking. I wanted a recipe which didn't have egg substitute in it, which I've heard is difficult to use successfully.

Here's my adaption of it :

Vegan Coffee Cake(s) (makes 12)

Preheat oven to 185C.

235ml soy milk
78ml canola (I used Nuttelex), melted
15ml apple cider vinegar
125g plain flour
100g sugar
1 t baking powder
1 t bicarb soda
2 t cinnamon
1 t ground ginger
¼ t salt

Combine wet ingredients. In a separate bowl sift together dry ingredients. Mix together and pour evenly into a paper-lined muffin tin.

Crumble topping:

94g plain flour
50g brown or white sugar
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t ground ginger
¼ t salt
115g sliced pecans
78 ml canola (Nuttelex), melted

Work ingredients together with hands, spoon evenly over batter. Bake for about 20 mins or until a toothpick comes out clean.

The nuts sank in most of them - no idea why. In the picture in the book they were stting beautifuly on the top, but I tasted one and it was pretty good. Hey, it even tasted like a normal cake!

And while we're on the subject of give-away cupcakes...I saw this post on Confessions of a food nazi's blog - how funny! Should I copy this idea when we sell the house?

I wish I was taking salad...

I've spent the morning baking and frosting two dozen chocolate cupcakes for the choir dinner tonight and now the kitchen (which was already pretty hot before I started) is 34C according to the temperature gauge thingy on the wall. And I'm thinking HOW COME I HAVE TO BAKE CAKES AND OTHERS GET TO MAKE A SALAD??

Ok, I've had my whinge. The good news is I now have a great chocolate cupcake recipe. Someone has recommended it on Rose Levy Beranbaum's website which I checked out to find an answer to yesterday's "flat/peaked cupcake" mystery. It seems that leaving the batter to sit for a while results in a "domier" cake. Anyway, the recipe is one from Rose's The Cake Bible. I've had my copy for years - it's practically falling to bits - and the thing Iove about it is that the recipes list the ingredients by cup measure and by weight. I've found most American recipes use only cup measures which are not nearly so accurate. The cakes turned out perfectly light and moist and not too sweet.

Rose Levy Beranbaum's Chocolate Fudge Cake(s) (makes 24)

All ingredients should be at room temperature.

85g Dutch process cocoa powder
354g boiling water
3 large eggs
1 1/2t pure vanilla extract
300g sifted cake flour (I used plain)
434g light brown sugar
2 1/4 t baking powder
1 1/4 t bicarb soda
3/4 t salt
227 unsalted butter (must be softened)

Preheat oven to 175C. In a medium bowl whisk together the cocoa and boiling water until smooth. Leave to cool to room temperature.

In another bowl lightly combine the eggs, 1/4 of the cocoa mixture and vanilla.

In a large mixing bowl combine the remaining dry ingredients and mix on low speed for 30 seconds. Add the butter and remaining cocoa mixture and mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. Increase to medium speed (high if using a hand mixer) and beat for 11/2 minutes to aerate and develop the cake's structure. Scrape down the sides of bowl. Gradually add the egg mixture in 3 batches, beating for 20 seconds after each addition.

Measure into 2 paper-lined muffin tins and bake for 20 - 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool in tins for a minute before turning out. Leave until completely cool before frosting. **


Chocolate Ganache :
Heat 120 ml/g of thickened cream until boiling. Add 160g grated dark chocolate and leave to stand a minute or so until melted. Stir until smooth, add 1 Tab butter and stir until smooth again.


**I had enough mixture for a few small patty cakes as well and most of these separated from the paper liners while they were cooling. Will have to check that website again. This isn't baking - this is SCIENCE!

choir cupcakes

The choir's having its annual startofanewyear dinner tomorrow night and I've been asked to take cupcakes. There are still a whole lot of leftovers from last week in the freezer all wrapped up in separate foil packages but I was too lazy to unwrap them to see if there's enough. So I decided to start afresh and make 2 kinds - carrot and chocolate - rather than make 2 batches of the same flavour (boring). I've never made carrot cupcakes before - only carrot big cakes. I used a Martha Stewart recipe I copied from somewhere or other. I didn't bother to convert all the U.S. cup measurements to ours and they turned out fine:

Carrot Cupcakes (makes 24)

All ingredients should be at room temperature.

1 cup pecans

3 cups plain flour

2 t baking powder

1 t bicarb soda

2 t cinnamon

1 t nutmeg

1 t salt

500g carrots

3 large eggs

1/3 cup buttermilk

1t pure vanilla extract

2 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 175C. Spread pecans in a single layer on a baking sheet and toast for 10 mins, turning them once halfway through cooking time. Cool and chop finely.

In a medium bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients except the sugar. Peel and grate the carrots finely (the food processor is perfect for this.) Place grated carrots, eggs, buttermilk, vanilla, sugar and oil in a large bowl and whisk until combined. Using a rubber spatula, fold the flour mixture into the carrot mixture with the chopped pecans.

Spoon mixture into 2 paper lined muffin tins and bake for 20 - 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove from tins and cool completely before frosting.

There was a bit of leftover batter (I'll make the 24 a bit bigger next time) which was enough for another 3 when the first lot came out of the oven. The one on the right (below) is the one of the 2nd batch left to stand for 25 minutes. See how it's peaky and the other one flat? No doubt RLB knows why that happened - will check out her site/book later to try and find the answer.

I topped them with the same cream cheese frosting I used for the Red Velvet cupcakes - recipe here.

I'll do a bit of searching tonight to find a nice chocolate cupcake recipe using cocoa. The kitchen is now pretty hot so I'll make them first thing tomorrow.

And just between us ... I nipped down to the corner to buy a takeaway coffee while the cakes were cooling. I left the house in (floury) cut-off tracky pants and thongs and with my bra straps showing. I realised, sadly, that after just 12 days of being retired I'd completely let myself go.

red velvet cupcakes

Recipe as promised yesterday....

Red Velvet Cupcakes (makes approx 24)

All ingredients should be at room temperature.

300g sugar
125g butter
2 eggs
250g cake flour or plain flour
2 T dutch-processed cocoa powder
1 t bicarb soda
1 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 t pure vanilla extract
1 t white vinegar
red food colouring (enough to colour the batter bright red. The amount depends on what kind you're using. I used about 1 teaspoon of Wilton's "Christmas red" concentrated paste)

Preheat oven to 175 C. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs singly, beating until each is incorporated. In a separate bowl sift together the dry ingredients. In another bowl whisk together the buttermilk, vinegar and vanilla. Mix in 1/3 of the dry ingredients, followed by 1/2 of the wet, repeat, then finish with dry. Stir in red food colouring as above. Scoop into paper-lined cupcake tins and bake for about 20 mins or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool 5 mins in tins before turning out.

These are yummy topped with cream cheese frosting :

250g Philly cream cheese (I read it should be used straight from the fridge - creamier result??)
70g butter at room temp.
1 t pure vanilla extract

Cream together. When smooth gradually add 21/2 cups pure icing sugar.

thank-you cupcakes

Today I took cupcakes to each library branch as a thank you for my wonderful send-off last week.

See the creamy coloured ones? They're Red Velvet - a flavour I keep reading about in U.S. cake blogs. I found a million recipes for it one the net and from them made my own version. They taste very good with cream cheese frosting. I'll post the recipe tomorrow. I'm a bit over cakes right this minute. If I ever had the teeniest thought I might like to make cupcakes for money, today I knew I could never do it.

needed - a decent cupcakery in melbourne

Today I was going to tell you about a new cupcake shop in Melbourne that I'd read about. Not sure when they opened but I think not that long ago. Anyway I tried out their cupcakes yesterday...they looked really great and the nice girl who served me assured me they were all freshly baked. I bought 4 different flavours and we all had a bit of each. Disappointingly all but one of them (the carrot) was crumbly and stale. Looks like we still need a good cupcake bakery in Melbourne.

nigella's burnt-butter brown-sugar cupcakes

I made these cupcakes ages ago when I first bought How to be a domestic goddess. I couldn't find any golden icing sugar at the time so I made up my own topping. I can't remember the result being anything to rave about so I had good intentions of continuing to look for the vital icing sugar. I'd forgotten about it until recently when I saw a picture Burnt Butter Cupcakes on the Cupcakes take the cake blog. They looked pretty good with the thin glaze, but I still wanted to make the recipe exactly as it is in the book. So I've been having another look around for the golden icing sugar and yesterday I found it in, of all places, the local deli.

Burnt-Butter Brown Sugar Cupcakes

12-bun muffin tray lined with muffin papers

for the cupcakes:
150g unsalted butter
125g self-raising flour
60g golden caster sugar
65g light muscovado sugar
2 large eggs
1 tspn vanilla extract
1 tspn baking powder
2-3 tablespoons milk

for the icing:
150g unsalted butter
250-300g golden icing sugar, sieved
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2-3 tablespoons milk

Preheat oven to 200c and then get on with burning your butter. Put it in a small saucepan on medium heat, stirring all the time until it turns a dark golden colour. Take the pan off the heat and strain the butter into a bowl or cup, as it will have made a sediment. In other words, this is like clarified butter, but with a smoky note. Let the butter solidify again, but it must remain soft. (I put it in the fridge for a while). When the butter is solid but still soft, put all the cake ingredients except the milk in a food processor and blitz to a smooth batter. As normal, add the milk down the funnel, pulsing sparingly to form a soft, dropping mixture. Divide between the paper cases, and cook for 15-20 minutes. While the cupcakes are baking, get on with the icing. It's the same procedure for the butter - burn, sieve, solidify - then beat it with half the sugar or enough to make it stiff. Add tablespoons of the milk and the remaining sugar alternately to reach a good consistency, and finally the vanilla.While the icing's still soft, smear messily over the cooled and waiting cupcakes.

And the verdict? Nice and light but killingly sweet! Maybe I'll try them with that thin glaze next time. The recipe says it makes12 but I only made 10, 9 after I'd tried one. Not enough to go round at my work. So I'll give them to Georgie to take to hers and hopefully the girls will think they're ok.

billy's chocolate cupcakes

As my Billy's Vanilla Vanilla cupcakes were such a success I was looking forward to trying out the chocolate version. I found both recipes here. I converted the ingredients to the Australian equivalents and again used the all-important cake flour. The raw mixture was smooth and silky and tasted delicious, and all was going well...


until they were baked. Every single one collapsed as soon as I took them out of the oven. There was enough mixture for about 30 so I cooked the 2nd batch longer but the same thing happened.


No way was I going to throw them all away and waste all that butter and chocolate. So I resurrected them by turning them upside down and trimming away the "crusts", then frosting them with ganache. Think I'll be sticking to chocolate cupcakes made with cocoa in future rather than melted chocolate.

billy's bakery vanilla vanilla cupcakes

It's weird that there are no dedicated cupcake shops in Melbourne. I think Sydney has half a dozen. If you Google cupcakes/Melbourne there are quite a few entries for shops that sell them, but they don't specialise. They are several mentions of Crabapple Bakery cupcakes, but on the two occasions I've bought theirs - once from Prahran Market and once from the Bayswater factory shop - though they looked great they were stale and dry.

Yesterday I made cupcakes using a recipe from Billy's Bakery in New York. I found the recipe here a while back, and my friend Robyn's birthday was a great excuse to try it out.

I made the effort to source and purchase American cake flour from here, and the cakes did seem very light and airy as a result. I'm not sure if substituting the same amount of plain flour would be ok. I've seen Australian cake flour in the supermarket recently - I'll definitely be buying some and trying it out next time. Because U.S. cup and spoon measurements are slightly different to ours, here are the amounts I used after conversion :

Billy's Vanilla Vanilla Cupcakes (Makes 24)

All ingredients should be at room temperature:

200g cake flour

150g plain flour

300g caster sugar

15g baking powder

1/2 tspn salt

250g softened unsalted butter, cut into 1-cm cubes

4 large eggs

237 ml milk

1 tspn pure vanilla extract

The method used, i.e. the dry ingredients are combined with the butter and a minimum amount of liquid, rather than the traditional creaming method, is one I've used before, as recommended by Rose Levy Beranbaum in her book The cake bible. She says "the method is faster, easier, and virtually eliminates any possibility of toughening the cake by overbeating."

I got to use my fancy new icecream scoop rather than my old plastic one which had lost its emptying thingy. Sheer bliss!

I halved the amount of Billy's vanilla buttercream, and it was just the right amount for the 24 cupcakes :

125g unsalted butter

3-4 cups icing sugar

1/4 cup milk

1/2 tspn pure vanilla extract.

Happy birthday Robyn!

New Year's Eve

New Years Eve always means dinner for 8 at our place. Everyone brings a course so I just have to cook the main. I decided to do lamb in the outdoor electric kettle barbecue, using Karen Martini's recipe for roasted boned leg of lamb with basil, lemon, almond, oregano and garlic from her Where the heart is. I hadn't made it before but everything from the book has turned out really well so I was confident it would be ok.

I marinated the lamb legs overnight in zip-lock bags and let them come to room temperature before roasting. They took about 1 1/2 hours to cook, and the result was delicious and meltingly tender.

I've been wanting to try roast potatoes in duck fat a la Nigella for ages, but couldn't find duck fat anywhere. I finally found some at the local poultry shop and made little roast potato cubes. Maybe not so healthy but they were crispier than done in oil and had a lovely flavour. (Note: I later remembered Nigella uses goose fat. It's Nigel Slater who uses duck fat. I'll keep a lookout for goose fat to try.)

I've just reread Julian Barnes' The pedant in the kitchen. This hilarious book is perfect for anyone who loves to cook, and particularly for those who, like me, collect and read cookbooks with a passion. One of the funniest chapters "No, I won't do that" is about the River Cafe Cook Book's (extravagant - 10 eggs!) Chocolate Nemesis, and the disasters that ensued when it was made by amateur cooks. This, says Julian Barnes, lead to the "paranoid explanation ...that some key element of the recipe had deliberately been omitted, thereby driving customers back to the (River Cafe) restaurant for the authentic item."

I made a version of Chocolate Nemesis for a NYE dinner a few years ago from a recipe in a delicious magazine. From what I can remember it was pretty straight forward and turned out fine, so perhaps it was not exactly the same as the original recipe. In the book Julian Barnes goes on to say that when River Cafe Easy was published, the Chocolate Nemesis recipe was halved and the cooking time altered considerably. I wanted to try out this "easy" version, but as our dessert was being brought by someone else, Georgie and I thought we'd make it for her own NYE dinner party. Here's the recipe .

I didn't get to try it but Georgie's guests apparently loved it. No-one took a photo of it once it was cut...hopefully it looked something like this picture of the delicious version!

New Year's Eve was a double celebration as it was the Beautiful Bridesmaid's 60th birthday on Christmas day. So of course, a good excuse for cupcakes! Happy birthday Jen.

And a very, very Happy New Year to all!

pistachio cupcakes

A friend of Georgie's went to Shannon Bennett's Cafe Vue soon after it opened in Little Collins St. and bought what she described as the best cupcake ever. Oh boy, we couldn't get in there fast enough to try them out, and she was pretty much right - they were fantastic. Shortly afterwards Nick gave us a voucher for dinner at wonderful Vue de Monde for Christmas. At the end of the evening we were chatting with our charming waiter (really he was more attentive host than waiter), and Cafe Vue came up in the conversation. I mentioned the cupcakes, which he said he too loved, and he offered to email me the recipe. He obviously forgot, because I never got it, but a similar one appeared shortly afterwards in the Financial review magazine. I didn't get around to making them because the recipe used pistachio paste, which I could only find in big expensive catering-size jars. THEN, delicious magazine had a full page article about Shannon Bennett, Cafe Vue and their pistachio cupcakes...and it included the "real" recipe. Thrilling! I made a batch straight away, tweaking the recipe a little and using ground almonds instead of marzipan. From what I could remember of the original cupcakes the results were pretty good.

We went back to Vue de Monde with friends from Adelaide in August, and I reminded our (same) charming waiter about the cupcake recipe. Apologising profusely for not sending it, he disappeared for a minute and returned with a zip-lock bag of pistachio paste to make up for his forgetfulness - how sweet! So I made them again, this time with the paste, but still with ground almonds. Then a few days ago, I finally found some good quality marzipan which the recipe specifies, so I made them a third time, this time with all the correct ingredients. They've been delicious each time, but with a slightly stronger almond flavour when I used the marzipan.

Pistachio Cupcakes

All ingredients should be at room temperature:

100 g shelled unsalted pistachio nuts plus an extra 30 g

100g unsalted butter

85g caster sugar

1 of either : 75g good quality marzipan (minm. 50% nuts)

OR 75g almond meal

OR 55g marzipan plus 20g pistachio paste

2 eggs

2 drops vanilla extract

30g semolina (I use plain flour)

1 Tab Kirsch (I use milk)

glace icing

extra pistachio nuts for decoration

Preheat oven to 170 C. Blitz 100g pistachios in food processor for a couple of minutes until finely ground. Roughly chop the other 30g. In electric mixer beat butter, sugar and vanilla (and pistachio paste and chopped marzipan if using) until light and fluffy and all lumps are removed. Add eggs singly, then stir in ground and chopped pistachio nuts, flour and milk, and almond meal if using. Dollop into paper-lined muffin tin and bake 20 - 25 mins. Cool in tin a couple of minutes before removing to a rack to cool completely. Ice with glace icing (Shannon makes his green, I prefer pale pink) and top with a pistachio nut. Makes 10 - 12.

happy engagement

We're very much looking forward to tomorrow as we've been invited to our new future in-laws for lunch. Apparently it's an Italian custom for the bride's parents to have the parents of the groom over for a meal to celebrate the engagement. We've already met Vittoria's parents a couple of times but this will be the first time we've sampled Carmela's cooking, which Nick tells us is wonderful. I thought I could contribute to the day by taking some special cupcakes - what else?

I wanted the cupcakes to look a bit "dressier" than my usual roughly iced ones, so I used shop-bought soft icing which I rolled out and imprinted with a lace pattern. The downside to using this product is that it doesn't taste as nice as homemade glace icing. So I needed a recipe for a cake that would taste good on its own in case the icing turned out to be inedible. I used this one which I've made succesfully a few times in the past. It's based on Sweet Violet Cakes from The Australian Women's Weekly cupcakes :

All ingredients should be at room temperature.

90g cream cheese
90g butter
2tspns finely grated lemon rind
2/3 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1/3 cup SR flour
1/2 cup plain flour

Preheat oven to 180C. Cream butter, cream cheese and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs singly, beating well after each addition. Fold in sifted dry ingredients. Dollop evenly into paper-lined muffin tins and bake 22-25 mins or till skewer comes out clean. Cool 5 mins in tins before removing to cool on a rack. Makes 12.




I got the idea for the icing from a picture in the same book of some pretty lacy wedding cupcakes. To make the patterned icing the recipe says to use a filigree textured plate. So this week I went to 3 cake-baking equipment shops, but none of them had heard of such a thing. So I cut the lace border off an old doily and pressed that into the icing to make a pattern.

Yesterday the postman brought my new Wilton Cake Caddy, so the cupcakes should travel safely.

Flourless chocolate cupcakes

I'm having afternoon tea today with a friend at her work for her birthday. Haven't had time to bake over the weekend so have defrosted these cupcakes that've been in the freezer for a few weeks.

Recipes for flourless chocolate cakes are everywhere. Their authors sometimes give credit to, amongst others, Claudia Roden or Elizabeth David, but it was probably originally a cake for Passover, the Jewish festival where no unleavened food may be eaten. I've made this cake a hundred times since I was given a copy of Dolly Campbell's I Hate to Cook in 1991. Dolly Campbell was the pseudonym used by Jill Dupleix in her cookery column in the Melbourne Age. The recipe was called "I Hate to Cook Best Ever Chocolate Cake". and I agreed with her that it was the best ever. It has popped up frequently in Jill's books and columns over the years. In one she suggested that you should use whichever chocolate is appropriate to the occasion...the finest couverture chocolate for best, and supermarket chocolate for not-so-special occasions. I had, up until then, always used either Cadbury or Plaistowe cooking chocolate or dark eating chocolate. So I tried making it with 70% Lindt chocolate - with disastrous results. The melted chocolate hardened into an unworkable lump once the nuts and egg yolks were mixed in. I've not been game to use anything higher than 45% cocoa solids since, but it may be worth giving it a go using something in between the two. The flavour will be delicious even with the cheap stuff!

I now usually bake the cake in individual serves rather than as a large cake. Despite being a bit ugly and funny-looking (the cracking is inevitable) they're deliciously rich, yet light, and need nothing more than a dust of icing sugar or cocoa on the tops.


Flourless Chocolate Cake(s)

250g dark chocolate
150g unsalted butter
1 Tab strong black coffee
1 Tab brandy (opt.)
150g caster sugar
125 ground almonds/almond meal*
5 eggs, separated

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Place chocolate, butter, sugar, coffee and brandy in a heat-proof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, stirring occasionally until butter and chocolate are completely melted and mixture is smooth. Stir in the ground almonds, then the lightly beaten egg-yolks. Whip egg whites until stiff but not dry. Stir a big spoonful into the chocolate mixture to lighten it, then fold in the rest with a large metal spoon or a whisk. Spoon into paper-lined muffin tins or a 23cm greased and paper-lined springform tin. Bake for about 30 mins. for the small cakes, or 45-50 mins. for the large cake, or until firm to the touch but still a little soft in the centre. Cool the small cakes for 5 mins. in the moulds before removing. Cool large cake completely before inverting onto serving plate. Sprinkle with icing sugar or cocoa.

Makes about 15 cupcakes or 1 large cake.

*You can use hazelnuts instead of almonds for a slightly different flavour. Finely ground is best, but coarsely ground works well too and will give a crunchier texture.

*They'll keep for 2-3 days in the fridge (bring to room-temp. before eating), but if you want to freeze them, open freeze first, then wrap in cling-film then foil.

teacakes

Today I've made cupcakes for tomorrow's "farewell Moira" arvo tea. I've used the recipe I always use when making cupcakes for a crowd. It's a re-jigged cake recipe cut from a mag a few years ago. I'm such a fan of this recipe as it's foolproof, it makes a lot (around 22) and they always turn out flat-topped which is best if you're using glace icing rather than buttercream.

Passionfruit Buttermilk Cupcakes

All ingredients should be at room temperature:

185g butter, softened
1 1/4 cups caster sugar
1/2 cup icing sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups SR flour
1/2 cup plain flour
1/2 cup passionfruit pulp (about 6)
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 tspns finely grated lemon rind

Preheat oven to 165 degrees. Cream butter and sugars until pale and fluffy. Add eggs singly, beating well after each addition. Add rind, then sifted flours in 3 batches and liquids in 2 - so flour, liquid, flour, liquid, flour. Dollop mixture into paper lined cupcake tins (I use a 1/4 cup measuring cup to do this so they're all a similar size) and bake for 25 mins. or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in tins for 5 mins to stop cakes shrinking away from papers. Remove and cool completely on a rack before icing.

Note: I couldn't find any cheap passionfruit anywhere, so I blitzed a peeled orange with the stick blender and used the resulting pulp instead. I think the result was as good if not better than with passionfruit, and was much cheaper than buying 6 @ $1.49 each.