Cupcakes Sweet and Cupcakes Savoury

Ultimate Vanilla Cupcakes with a Gingerbread Men toppers!

I've been reading an extraordinary blog over the last few days called the Cupcake Project. It's a wonderfully creative exploration of one woman's cupcake adventures. I love the fact that Stef (who writes the blog) freely admits that she embarked on her amazing adventure having never baked a cupcake before but volunteering to make cupcakes for a friend's wedding. Now there's a spirit of get-up-and-go to emulate - I love her gumption!

So having been inspired by her blog, I decided to make some of her Ultimate Vanilla Cupcakes with some Butter Icing and Gingerbread Men as toppers. I'll admit, it was partly because DS2 has a class party coming up in a couple of weeks for the end of the year and I thought I might make some cupcakes for the occasion. I did make one alteration to her recipe though. I didn't use a vanilla pod, instead I used 1 1/2 tsps of vanilla paste added to the sugar and butter during the creaming stage.

Dapper looking Gingerbread man with bow tie

The butter icing recipe I used was from here, and I used raspberry essence to flavour it. It's a nice alternative to the standard vanilla and gives the final product a really gentle almost floral flavour. Finally, the gingerbread recipe came from here. This is a really easy and quick gingerbread recipe and one I'll use often. It's much simpler than the one I normally use (which includes treacle) and the kids loved it. I ended up with loads of left over little gingerbread men, so they got iced and stored for munching on during the week.

Having spent the morning in a frenzy of sugary baking, I decided there had to be a savoury alternative. After all, if you can make a sweet cupcake, why can't you make a savoury one? With that thought in mind, I trawled a variety of websites in an attempt to find a good recipe for a savoury cupcake - one that wasn't a muffin, but also one that didn't include a cup of sugar. Most of the sites I found had recipes that were really sweet cupcakes with meat and vegetables added. That definitely wasn't what I was looking for. One site had a gorgeous alternative, but no recipe.

The creative process at work

In the end, I made up my own. I love making up recipes. It's a creative process that requires me to work with ratios and think about how ingredients will work with each other. Chemistry, math and food all in one exciting process (with a bit of artistry thrown in) - joy! I jot down possible ingredients, figure out possible amounts and then work on what temperature to set the oven and how long to cook for. I read through the recipe 3 or 4 times and then I jot the steps down in pictorial form. I can't draw more than poor squiggles, but these little scribbles help me during the hectic cooking process when I'm rushing from one step to the next, often without reading the steps properly. The pictures jog my memory. Here's the recipe I came up with (using some tinned Spam I had in the pantry). The results were really pretty good. A bit doughy, but I'll work on that - it might be a little less so if I'd used minced meat instead (Note to Self: that's something worth pursuing for the next batch).

Spammy Cupcakes
Ingredients:

• 223g plain flour
• 80g unsalted butter
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda (bicarb soda)
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 2 - 3 tsp mixed herbs
• 230 ml milk
• 100g cheddar cheese, cubed
• 1 tin Spam
• 50g fresh tomato, diced
• 1 medium red onion or 1/2 a large one, chopped
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp non-iodised salt

Method:

Preheat oven to 180C.

In food processor, cream together butter and sugar.

Add egg and mix well.

Add Spam, onion and cheese and mix until onion and cheese are well incorporated (indistinguishable).

Add flour, baking powder, baking soda and herbs and mix.

Slowly add milk. When milk is incorporated, add tomato and pulse (you want to keep some of the chunky pieces of tomato).

1/2 fill patty pans and bake for 25 - 30 mins.

Potato, Sweet Potato, Garlic and Blue Cheese Icing:

Ingredients:

• 4  medium potatoes
• 1 -2 sweet potatoes (depending on size)
• butter
• milk
• 2 cloves garlic
• 50g Blue cheese
• salt to taste

Method:

Peel and boil potatoes, sweet potatoes and garlic together. Drain and mash well (I used a Bamix), adding butter and milk.

While potato mash is still warm, blend in the blue cheese and salt to taste. Allow to cool a little then fill in piping bag.

Pipe onto savoury cupcakes and garnish with a sliver of cherry tomato.

These can be eaten hot or cold (we had them for breakfast the next day too!).