0 Kiwi fruit cupcakes

I have never made Kiwi cupcakes before despite this being a fruit I often enjoy eating, I like the combination of juicy fruity almost opal fruit flavour and bright green flesh. They are however not a fruit that immediately springs to mind when you fancy baking.

I think kiwi fruit are cute, like little furry creatures that live in the fruit bowl and there are numerous ways of accessing the bright green flesh, my preferred method being slicing and I have made kiwi fruit jam in the past with great success.

For this recipe you can dress with butter cream and a kiwi slice or just leave plain and sprinkle with demerara sugar for some crunch. Its an easy tasty bake which works with gluten free flour as well as normal wheat flour.

What you need

• 2 large kiwi fruits or 4 small kiwi fruits, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch chunks
• 2 cups of plain flour 
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 egg - free range
• 1 cup skimmed milk
• 1 tsp vanilla paste
• 1/4 cup coconut oil - melted
• Demerara sugar - for sprinkling
• Buttercream (optional)
• Slices of Kiwi for decoration
• Large muffin cake cases

What you do

• Pre heat the oven to 200c /180c fan
• Line the cupcake tin with the case cakes
• Beat the eggs, oil, milk and vanilla together in a large bowl, I used my mixer. 
• Sieve the flour,baking powder, cinnamon, sugar and salt into the bowl and mix together quickly
• Fold in the chopped kiwi fruit
• Spoon the mixture into the cake cases - this mixtures makes approximately 12 large muffins / cupcakes.
• Sprinkle the tops with demerara sugar if using
• Pop into the oven and bake for 20 minutes or so until well risen, golden and cooked through when tested with a cocktail stick
• Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack
• When fully cool, decorate with buttercream if you wish

I'm entering this post to this months Alphabakes hosted by The More than the occasional baker , the letter this month being K - for Kiwi fruit in this case.

                                                       

 And to Bake of the Week hosted by Casa Costello

                                                            

And also to Treat petite over at Cakeyboi, the theme this month being "Anything Goes"


                                            

Love Cake Jibberjabber - the theme this month is Back to School - Something new. As I said earlier in the post I haven't baked with Kiwi fruit previously.

                                     

Detail: Kiwi fruit cupcakes

0 Pretty cupcakes using Sugar Sheets from Craft Company - a review

Recently was given the opportunity to carry out a review post for the Craft Company, an on line company which specialises in cake baking and cake decorating products. I had to choose £10 of goods for review so after much browsing on their website I plumped for a selection of sugar sheets. I have never used sugar sheets and was intrigued as to how they would perform in a domestic setting.

As regular readers of my blog will know I am not a fantastic decorator and prefer a more homestyle form of decoration for my bakes, the sugar sheets looked like something that might be useful and where a little different from the usual, when I am decorating I tend to use fondants and cutters.

Butterfly printed sugar sheet

Red polka dot sugar sheet

Pink blossom printed sugar sheet

The delivery service from the Craft Company was excellent and my chosen products arrived the next day well packaged and in one piece. It was recommended to use the sheets in a warm kitchen which is what I did, I decided to bake some basic vanilla cupcakes and dress them with a simple vanilla and rose buttercream using the shapes I cut from the sugar sheets to decorate them.

The sheets varied slightly in thickness and I found some to be more difficult to cut than others and had to resort to using a meat mallet to cut the shapes with the cutter, the resultant shapes could be used to decorate biscuits, cupcakes or larger cakes. After a while the sheets did become a little more brittle so you need to work quickly to get the best results, all in all I probably wouldn't buy sugar sheets again as I tend towards a simpler finish for my cakes but think they would be useful if you had a lot of the same type of decoration to produce.

The Craft Companies website has some useful video tutorials on using this and other products so for cake decorating supplies the company is definitely worth checking out, the prices look competitive and the delivery service is good.

Detail: Pretty cupcakes using Sugar Sheets from Craft Company - a review