The more blogs I read, the more writing styles I recognize. In many ways it makes me reflect on my own style. I like to open each post with a short sentence that is meant to state the theme or grab some attention. I generally love to make my titles plays on words. I use parentheses a lot (I mean a lot). One that I don’t do, but find great is the intentional strikethrough and immediate revision but I like it. The funnier, the better. Rob from Eat, Sleep, Procrastinate has used this in the post below, causing me to spit out my coffee upon first reading. I love it and I know you’ll both the post below and Eat, Sleep, Procrastinate…
Over this last summer (and because I had a lot of work that I should have been doing) I became obsessed with a TV show called “The Great British Bake Off”. The show pits a selection of amateur bakers against one another in a series of challenges designed to test their skill, knowledge and creativity in the world of baking, to find out which of these contestants will be crowned as Britain’s Best Amateur Baker. I know, it sounds awesome right!?
One of the weekly challenges given to the bakers was to create their own regional bun, with many of them opting to create the timeless British Classic, the Chelsea Bun. This is where my obsession with them began. After my own attempts at creating a Chelsea Bun I finally got the recipe and method to a point where I was happy with the result each time they came out of the oven. But then I started thinking. What if we could put the exact same taste and thrill of a Chelsea Bun into some other form of food? Obviously there is no food easier to make or more popular right now than the humble cupcake and since my search for a “Chelsea Cupcake” wasn’t turning up any results it was clear that I had to take matters into my own hands.
Being a poor, financially challenged University Student I had to keep it cheap and simple, and like the majority of the recipes I post, this was quite easy to do. Obviously they had to taste good as I didn’t want my friends to think that what they tasted was the baked remains of a particularly sweaty tramp substandard and after much playing around and countless jiggling of the recipe (not to mention all the real coursework that I avoided) I finally developed my very recipe for Chelsea Cupcakes and I thought that I would share it with you all:
Chelsea Cupcakes
Ingredients:
(With my being English, these quantities may need adjusting to US measurements)
Cupcakes:
175g brown sugar (3/4 Cup)
175g self-raising flour (34 cup)
75g butter (5 tbsp)
2tbsp cinnamon
50g dried mixed fruit (3-4 tbsp)
1tsp baking powder
2 eggs
Buttercream Icing:
140g softened butter (9.3 tbsp)
280g icing sugar (1 1/4 cups)
1tsp vanilla extract
Method:
Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. (350 degrees Fahrenheit for those of you that need the conversion!)
Put the sugar and butter to a large mixing bowl and cream together.
Crack in the eggs and sift in the flour, combining all the ingredients into a thick mixture.
Add the cinnamon and mixed fruit and stir through thoroughly.
Spoon a healthy dollop of the mixture into each of the cupcake cases and place into a cupcake tin.
Pop the cupcakes into the oven and bake for 15 minutes or until nicely browned and risen.
*Optional Step: Enjoy a lovely cup of hot tea*
(Coffee is an acceptable substitute as not everyone is quite as tea mad as us Englishmen)
Remove cupcakes from the tin and allow to cool.
Meanwhile, mix the icing sugar and the butter in another bowl and stir until combined. Add the vanilla extract and stir well.
Spoon the mixture into a piping bag and pipe onto the now cooled cupcakes. Decorate with a few pieces of mixed fruit.
Ta-Da! A true British classic in cupcake form!
