Cheery Cherry & Chocolate

I was planning to bake some cupcakes for the last meeting of my church small group and I asked a friend what his favourite cupcake was. He said chocolate. Of course! A classic choice I do not deny; but on walking into the supermarket and seeing red cherries on offer, I couldn't resist picking up a punnet to add to class a bit of summer. Think black forest, yummy. I topped mine with some lemon curd frosting that I had left over (dyed peach for prettiness) but I think these would suit a marscapone or more creamy topping.

Ingredients:

100g plain flower,

140g caster sugar,

1.5 tsp baking powder,

Tsp vanilla sugar,

Pinch of salt,

40g unsalted butter at room temperature,

120ml whole milk,

15 fresh cherries chopped and pitted (plus 12 cherries to decorate)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180◦C.

With an electric mixer cream the butter with the sugar until smooth.

Combine flour, cocoa, vanilla sugar and salt, and sieve into the butter/sugar mix.

Stir gently until the mixture is well-combined and sandy in consistency.

Whisk together milk and egg in a jug and pour gradually into the dry mixture, combining gently. Do not over mix.

Add the chopped cherries and stir just enough to evenly combine them.

Pour the batter into 12 cupcake cases.

Bake in the oven for 20 mins.

Allow to cool and then add frosting of your choice.

Chocolate Chilli Chums

Asian food is my friend. Coming from Leicester, a city that celebrates the Indian curry (or should I say the Anglicized take on Indian curry) with tribute paid to the cuisine in the form of curry-house-trophies dotted up Belgrave Road, from an early age I have enjoyed the fiery charm of the noble chilli. This passion for Asian food intensified with my first sojourn to the continent in 2003. A family adventure to Sri Lanka, pact full of exotic thrills (including bottle feeding a baby elephant) and yet the memories most heavily imprinted on my mind these 8 years later were the mealtimes: curry for breakfast, curry for lunch and curry dinner.

Since then I have traversed over to Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand and wonders (literally) afresh have been revealed to my palette. As a food-fanatic, it would be hard to pin-down my favourite cuisine, but if I was to be hypothetically hard-pushed (because let's face it, why should I have to answer this question definitively and exclude a realm of other delectable dishes - I'm never going to be on a desert island with only one meal available to me), I am pretty sure 'Asian' would be pressured up to the near top of the pile. And the main reason for this romance is the spicy flutter induced by the kick of a chilli.

I also have a weakness for chocolate ...

So last week, after having prepared a Vietnamese dipping sauce (courtesy of Nigella Lawson) for a friend's dinner party, I had two chillis left over. Wanting to prevent the travesty of these bright and bold babies becoming shriveled and care-ridden, I started to daydream about how I might maintain their vitality and enjoy the spirited punch that they were extending to my palette. My mind wondered chocolatewards and after some internet browsing, I came across a Jamie Oliver recipe for chocolate chilli cake.

Not possessing a large enough cake tin and having my mind set on using up a bag of marshmallows that I had been handed by a friend - I decided to give the recipe a whirl, but with the variants of batter popped into cupcake cases and topping the cupcakes with a marshmallow-chocolate frosting. The marshmallow frosting proved to be a sweetness in harmonious contraposition to the chilli, but I also decided to finish off half of the batch with some white chocolate coconut frosting (which I happened to have left over). Personally, I found this combination even more heavenly, with the mild creaminess of the coconut intermediating the feistiness of the chilli - a fusion reminiscent of many an edible Thai chef-d'oeuvre.

For the Chocolate Marshmallow Topping:

250g of marshmallows

5 tbsp milk

Tsp of cocoa powder

Put the marshmallows in a pan, with the milk and cocoa (sieved). Melt them gently, whilst stirring and then put aside to cool. Once cool and thick enough to spread, spread the topping over the cupcakes.

(I put my mixture into the fridge to quicken the process and help it thicken, but be aware if you do this for too long, it will become so sticky and thick, that it will be impossible to spread. I had to melt mine down again, which then meant it lost all it's volume and I had to pad it out with icing sugar.)

For the White Chocolate Coconut Frosting:

75g white chocolate

15g unsalted butter

500g icing sugar

100g desiccated coconut (depends on preference)

Milk - judge the amount according to the consistency

Melt the white chocolate in a heatproof bowl above a pan of boiling water. Remove from the heat and allow to cool. In the meantime, cream together the butter and icing sugar. Once completely combined, pour in the white chocolate and stir through. Add the desiccated coconut (more for a thicker frosting and texture finish). If the frosting becomes thick and too hard to stir, add some milk. Frost the cakes!

I love icing, but the cakes are actually moist enough not to need any topping at all.

These spicy, but sweet cakes are exactly what you need on a miserable rainy day, or on a hazy summer's afternoon for that matter. In fact these chocolate chilli chums are perfect for any occasion in which you want you to vitalise the moment.

Love Lavender

Towards the end of last September I tried the most delightful blend of tea. I had not been in Holland that long, but was beginning to learn about the Dutch method of serving tea ... If you order a cup of tea here in Holland, the waiter will bring you a cup of hot water and then a lovely box with divisions in it - which looks like it could house childhood trinkets - but actually contains a whole variety of tea, ranging from fruity, to black, green and sometimes even white varieties. At first I had snuffed their fancy assortments, craving the simple home comfort of English Breakfast tea with milk (which they don't serve unless you make a special point of asking). But on this particular September afternoon a wave of spontaneity, or perhaps it was the spirit of interculturation, came over me, as I spied a little pouch containing earl grey tea leaves and lavender buds and I popped it into my hot water...

Well you have to know how this ends, by the post title! I now love love love lavender. Sure the smell had always enchanted me, speaking of sweet dreams and soothing warm tummies (I have a microwavable lavender bag) but wow, the taste. Somehow it's delicate perfumey taste is just so perfect in a cup of tea, but that's not the only kind of cup that lavender finds a niche in.

I have had lavender subconsciously releasing its aroma in mind for months. The scent lessened for a while and I started baking copious amounts of cupcakes for my friends. I began experimenting with various ingredients, the results of which I shall share with you at some point, but then it occurred to me, that Lavender Cupcakes were a concoction waiting to happen. I did a bit of internet surfing and saw that both Nigella Lawson and the Hummingbird Bakery have their own variety. I followed (almost) the Hummingbird recipe and the results are as good, if not better, as that first experimental cup of tea back in September.

I split the lavender cream cheese frosting in two and through half of the mixture, blended in some blueberry jam. My intention was for the purple colour, as I didn't have any food colouring, but the flavour actually works really well.

Quick, go and make your lavender cupcakes... Perfect sweet treat for the summer. You can find a recipe using trusty google and typing in 'lavender cupcakes'.