Creative Baking

On the run-up to Christmas I challenged myself to walk away from recipes and create two types of cupcake that I had never tried before: Irn-Bru cupcakes and Mince Pie cupcakes. My research indicated that many people had come up with their own ideas for mince pie muffins but no-one admitted having made Irn-Bru cupcakes. The mince pie cupcake recipes showed a variety of approaches to the creation, though most opted to just mix the mincemeat through the batter.

Not what I was aiming for but I opted to give it a try.

When making Mince Pie cupcakes I wanted to capture the elements that make mince pies such a festive treat (sound cheffy enough?) - a crumbly, buttery pastry element and a gooey, hot mincemeat centre. I experimented with the approaches taken in the online recipes - the mincemeat swirl, the frozen lumps of mince pie in the batter - before taking my own route of a generously batter-topped pie. This had enough batter on top to differentiate it from the standard sponge-topped mince pies and the pastry bottom kept the cupcake tidy enough to eat with ones fingers (the mincemeat sank to the bottom in many of the other versions). It also gave a satisfyingly deep fill.

If you want to do the same, use a standard butter-pastry recipe (I used amaretto rather than water with the flour and butter for a nutty sweetness) and make deep fill mince pies in a muffin tin. Once cooked, remove tops (and eat!) and fill the rest of the muffin cups with standard cupcake batter. Bake for the normal length of time required by the recipe you use (the pastry can take it - gets a bit messy if the pastry isn't baked first). Enjoy!

Irn-Bru cupcakes were a bit harder. I reduced a litre of Irn-Bru down to a couple tablespoons of syrup. I added some of this into a standard cupcake batter and used the rest to top the end product. In retrospect I should have just used the syrup to top the cupcakes as the cupcake itself ended up rather tough with only a hint of the Irn-Bru coming through. The chewy, intense topping worked though!

These worked out reasonably well, but cooking your own concoctions can be difficult if you don't fully understand the mechanisms at play during the baking process. I hate to waste food so I make myself eat any disasters I produce. Perhaps this is why I bake off-recipe so little. Be bold, be brave, try something new folks - it's not always a disaster!