I recently saw some lovely looking Scottish raspberries in
the supermarket – we are lucky to get great berries up here – and I wondered
what could I conjure up with said rasps?
I bought a small punnet and took it home. Later whilst
having a look online, I saw that the Alphabakes challenge this month over at
‘The more than occasional baker’ and Caroline Makes (hosted by 'The more than occasional Baker' this month) is the letter ‘T’. It then hit me – Trifle!
Everyone has their own version of trifle, and mine’s uses raspberries. I always make it at Christmas and
although it is still summer I thought trifle shouldn’t just be for Santa time –
let’s have a portable version – Trifle Cupcakes, that can be eaten anytime of
the year!
Now as I said, my trifle uses raspberries. I tend to place
sponge fingers in the bottom of my dish, with rasps dotted around. I then pour
on some raspberry jelly - no booze in mine - just pure sweetness. When that has set I spread on some thick luscious
custard and when that has thickened sufficiently, I add whipped cream on top,
finished with a final garnish of crumbled Flake – heaven! I can almost hear
Noddy Holder screeching in the background – but these are actually very summery
cupcakes!
Ingredients:
Yield: 6 large cupcakes (muffins really!)
Cupcakes:
110 grams softened, unsalted butter
110 grams sugar
2 eggs
I tsp vanilla extract
100 grams plain flour
1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
Filling:
6 raspberries
Prepared sachet of raspberry jelly
Prepared custard (out of a tin, sachet, pot, you choose!)
Small pot of double cream - whipped
1 Flake, crumbled
Preheat your oven to 180oC. Place 6 muffin liners
in a muffin tray. Sieve together the flour and baking powder and set aside.
In a bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until pale
yellow in colour and totally combined. Add the eggs one at a time, combining
after each addition. Add the vanilla extract (I used the LittlePod vanilla paste I was sent recently)
and mix until slightly thickened. Next slowly fold in the flour mix until this
is just combined, don’t over mix. Fill the muffin liners about 2/3 full,
dividing the batter equally. Pop these into the oven and bake for 15 minutes,
or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the centre. Leave the
muffins to cool completely, removing them from the pan after 10 minutes. I left
mine over night so they went quite firm, this makes them easy to scoop out the
core.
To ‘core’ them I took a paring knife and cut out a section
from the tops, then with a melon baller, I scooped out the filling, leaving
enough cake, so the muffins held their shape.
I then placed a raspberry into
each hollowed out cake and smooshed them down with the end of a measuring spoon,
so they were flat against the bottom. Then with the melon baller, I scooped out
balls of the jelly and popped this on top of the raspberry. I then filled a
piping bag with the custard (although you could use a spoon) and filled the rest
of the cake with custard. I placed the whipped cream into a piping back and piped
on a swirl, on top of the custard. I then finished with the
crumbled flake.
I left my cupcakes a few hours before I enjoyed, so the
filling could settle and meld together slightly. But when I bit in, oh my
goodness, fresh raspberries, yummy vanilla sponge, with the coolness of the
jelly and creamy custard. And the topping of cream and flake was decadence
itself.
Remember trifle is for life, not just for Christmas - Go and
create!!
