Sometimes things don’t work out for a reason. At the time it’s disappointing and frustrating - especially when you’ve put time and effort it. You don’t want to see that effort go to waste, so you make some changes and try again. and then again. With a little luck, you may find you end up with something better than you’d hoped for originally, and you’ll have learnt a good few things on the way. No, I’m not talking about lifelong lessons in relationships or project proposal investment board meetings. I’m talking cakes. (Phew!) As a food blogger it is disappointing when recipes or pictures that you’re taking don’t work out. Just yesterday, I had a busy day and tried to do three recipes and three photoshoots. Two of the recipes tasted great, but my photos were awful (I’m still learning, and Chris is away with work so I can’t get him to photograph for me) and the other recipe photographed great but tasted awful. I grumpily gave up thinking I’d wasted a day, but then later on I realised that I’d actually learned quite a lot. I know what went wrong with the photos (composition issues and bad lighting) and I know what went wrong with the recipe. I can reshoot the photos. The recipe? well no amount of adjusting is going to fix it, but I may save it for an end-of-year roundup of kitchen fails. So not a total waste!! It’s the same with these cupcakes. They started out life as a lemon drizzle cake (I know, it’s like the six degrees to Kevin Bacon thing. Except, err it’s only 2 degrees, and Kevin has no involvement). I decided it’d be great to make a strawberry drizzle cake. A bit of experimentation and a lovely, moist cake recipe was developed. However, i’m pretty confidant that it’s impossible to make a crunchy, sugar drizzle out of strawberry juice. Works great with lemon juice. Try it with strawberry juice and you basically end up with jam. A lovely cake with a smearing of sticky jam. Not very attractive. So here’s what I came up with. I wanted the soft, fluffy cake. I wanted a topping with a bit of crunch, and I really wanted a strawberry infused drizzle. These muffins tick every box!! They’re actually really simple to make and I have a couple of magic ingredients that take these cupcakes to a new level.
First, you’re going to make your streusel topping. This is a simple case of rubbing small chunks of cold butter into flour until you get breadcrumbs, and then mixing in some light brown sugar. Next you’ll combine your main cupcake ingredients by mixing together egg, sugar, oil, vanilla and yoghurt (no electric mixer needed). Stir in the flour and baking soda and finally you’ll carefully fold in a big pile of chopped strawberries. Spoon the cake mixture directly into your muffin tray. Fill about two thirds full, and then add a good spoonful of the streusel mixture before placing in the oven. Whilst your cupcakes are cooking you can make your strawberry drizzle. For this you need strawberry juice. Place some chopped strawberries in a bowl and add a little sugar: Leave to macerate whilst the cupcakes are cooking. After about 15-20 minutes, you’ll find that the strawberries have released a lot of their liquid: Push this juicy mixture through a sieve and then mix with icing (powdered) sugar until you have a lovely, pink thick drizzle. Leave to thicken for 10 minutes or so whilst your cupcakes are cooling, then drizzle this mixture over the cupcakes using a spoon. Note: you can also make these cupcakes in cases if you prefer (my drizzle was a little bit thin in these ones):
The Strawberry Streusel Cupcakes Recipe:
