Jaffa Cake Cupcakes - Home Sweet Home Bake Along (1/100)

As you may remember, Pigling and I have decided to battle the post Bake Off Blues (it's a real thing) together by baking through one of our books. It took us a while to decide on a book - eventually we found one we both have - Home Sweet Home by the Hummingbird Bakery. The aim of this bake through is that we will actually try all of the recipes in a cookbook. I don't know about you, but I have several cookbooks where I have never cooked anything from it, or perhaps one or two recipes.

We're hoping to bake all the recipes, at a rate of about one a week - which, given the cover indicates there are 100 recipes, means we'll take about 2 years!! There may be some flexibility in the schedule, but this is up for negotiation. In order to avoid getting bogged down in one type of bake, we are planning to bake one recipe from each chapter in turn, then start again (i.e. week 1 cupcakes, week 2 cakes cheesecakes and roulades, week 3 cookies and biscuits... then back to cupcakes again for week 8)

If you're a baker, and fancy a little bit of light relief and baking fun, why don't you join us? You could bake just one recipe, or all of them, or just cheer from the sidelines! At some point there might be a logo/badge, but not just yet!

Anyway, onto this weeks recipe -  Jaffa Cake Cupcakes. A cupcake formation of the classic jaffa cake - a sponge base, an orange jelly filling and a chocolate buttercream - decorated with a jaffa cake (to remove doubt as to the contents!)

I love the idea of this bake. Hummingbird bakery cupcakes always intrigue me, as there is a much lower proportion of butter, higher proportion of sugar, than I would usually use, and the addition of milk. The batter is also made in an unusual (to me) way - the dry ingredients and butter and mixed together to make a crumb, then the liquid ingredients are slowly added. Normally for a sponge cake, I would cream butter and sugar, add eggs, flavourings and then flour and leavening. Milk would be unlikely to feature.

The Hummingbird method does produce a lovely tender crumb, but a rather crunchy top to the cake - which is remedied by copious quantities of buttercream (a little too much in this recipe, some ended up in the freezer, despite cakes with their volume in buttercream! Next time I would probably make 2/3 of the recipe for the icing, reduce the icing sugar and increase the cocoa content for a more chocolatey icing.)

Strangely the high sugar content makes the batter very sweet (yes, I tested it) but the sponge cake does not suffer. Altogether, this is a rather scrummy, and unusual, cupcake. I may need to invest in a cupcake corer for the future recipes, as my ability to extract cylinders of cake from cupcakes leaves something to be desired! I also couldn't find mini jaffa cakes, hence the large ones were halved to make "ears" for these cupcakes.

Ingredients:
Sponge:
70g unsalted butter, very soft
210g plain flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
210ml full-fat milk
2 eggs (large)
1 tsp vanilla extract
100g shredless (smooth) marmalade

Frosting: (but I would make only 2/3 of this)
450g icing sugar (sifted)
60g cocoa powder (sifted)
150g unsalted butter, very soft
60ml full fat milk
jaffa cakes, to decorate.

Recipe, from Home Sweet Home, by The Hummingbird Bakery, but also available as a Waterstones Recipe Card, here.

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