mango chai latte cupcakes and mango lime curd

Perhaps 2013 is my year for baking with different fruit. First passionfruits and now mangoes.

This bake came about when Drink Me Chai offered me some instant chai tea latte powders to play with. They have a great selection to choose from, but I was immediately intrigued by the mango flavour. I had no idea you could get mango flavoured chai latte!

When I decided on incorporating the instant chai powder into a cupcake, I fancied making a mango based curd as a filling. After some searching online I went with a mango lime curd recipe found on My Darling Lemon Thyme and it produced 3 full Bonne Maman sized jars of curd, so unless you want to go curd mad I would suggest halving the ingredients. I should also warn you that sieving mango puree is time consuming and so boring but it is worth doing.

Half of my cupcake batch were filled with the mango lime curd, also mixing it into the butter icing, and the other half were left plain with a mango chai latte flavoured butter icing.

It's hard to pick a winner. The curd batch had an extra punch of fruitiness, really pulling out the mango flavour, whereas the other batch were all about the chai latte flavour. I particularly enjoyed the creamy, spiced quality in the latter's icing. Despite my fondness for curds, I think I liked the more chai-ified (I'm making it a word) batch, but this is only if you're holding me at gun point to decide. I will happily eat tray-loads of either cupcake.

I also tried the mango chai as a drink and needless to say I loved it. The sweet, tropical fruitiness really comes through the warm spices. The powder can also be mixed with hot water instead of milk but I found the flavour disappointing as a water-based drink. Similar to water-based hot chocolates, they just lack that wonderfully indulgent sweetness and comfort you get with a milky drink. I always think if you're going to have a treat, do it properly!

And yes that's a new cake stand I picked up from my Glasgow travels two weeks ago. Is it possible to own too many three tier cake stands? (Humour me, please say no.)

Mango chai cupcakes

makes roughly 18 cupcakes

225g Stork margarine

225g caster sugar

225g eggs (I used three large duck eggs, but 4 normal hen eggs should weigh roughly the same)

2 tbsp instant mango chai latte powder from DrinkMeChai

2 tbsp milk

200g self-raising flour

1 jar of mango lime curd

Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan 160/Gas 4 and line cupcakes trays with cases. Beat together the margarine and sugar for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy. Add each egg one at a time, beating between each addition, and adding a tablespoon of the flour with the last egg to prevent the mixture from curdling. Mix together the chai powder and milk and add to the mixture. Sift in the remaining flour and mix everything together until fully incorporated. 

Divide the mixture between the cupcake cases, filling each one 2/3 full. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes, until well risen and springy to touch. Leave to cool in the trays for a couple of minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.
 

For the curd version, cut a hollow into the centre of each cupcakes (I just use a knife) and fill with a teaspoon of mango lime curd before replacing the top. Mix some of the curd into a standard butter icing (one part butter to two parts icing). I think I used 150g icing sugar, 75g butter and two teaspoons of curd to cover 8 cupcakes.
 

For the straight forward mango chai version, top each cupcake with butter icing flavoured with some of the instant chai powder. Once again I used a standard butter icing, but added some chai powder to taste along with a splash of milk until I was happy with the consistency.

Spread the icing on in a child-like fashion (like me) or pipe in swirls using a fancy nozzle, such as a wilton 1M or 2D.
 

Disclaimer: I was kindly sent products to bake with by Drink Me Chai. I was not paid for this post and all opinions expressed are my own.

Pyrex and pastels

I haven't baked anything over the last week as I've been on holiday visiting family and friends in Glasgow but I thought I'd share some of my most recent charity shop purchases.

Two more Johnson Brothers Cloud pieces to add to my collection: a medium sized jug and a gravy boat with its original dish.

I was also delighted to find four Sprayware pudding bowls a couple of weeks ago for a mere 5p each! I've seen pieces like these before on ebay, when I've been casually browsing retro pyrex, (on a side note, why do Americans have far prettier pyrex? It's not fair!) so I was delighted to get my hands on them.

I'm aware not everybody likes pyrex or sprayware, but personally I like their retro charm. The hexagonal shape of these bowls really appeals to me.

Still on a pyrex theme, my sister in law bought me this little sugar bowl a while ago. For some unknown reason, whenever I see bowls or containers about this size I have visions of them filled with buttons.

However I'm thinking I might use this as a little used teabag container because, let's face it, those little teapot shaped dishes are way too small if you drink lots of tea throughout the day and empty glass jars aren't as pretty. I could just put used teabags straight to the bin but that would be way too sensible wouldn't it? Plus I sometimes like to reuse my teabags.

On a side note my laptop decided to stop connecting to the internet last week (amongst other suspicious things) which is a bit inconvenient. Thankfully this post was more or less written up last week and my brother doesn't mind me stealing his computer to catch up on blog reading. Fingers crossed my laptop is fixable! I'm so clueless with techy stuff.

Yoghurt, lemon and lime bundt

It's a sad evening when only half of your bundt comes out of the tin.

My gut instinct was to leave it in the tin until completely cold, but the recipe said to leave for 15-20 minutes before turning out. Hmmmm.

I assumed I had to turn it out sooner due to the sugar syrup being poured over the top while the cake was still hot. Perhaps the sugar would have stuck to the tin if I left it to cool? Only thing is, the syrup never really soaked in through the sponge, and left the top (or bottom? since it's a bundt) a bit soggy.

Flavour and texture-wise, this is not a bad cake. The yoghurt gives the cake a soft, mooth texture and cool, creamy flavour, and although it is a shame the syrup didn't soak through the whole cake, the (soggy) crust is full of citrus tang.

Personally I like when a cake really packs a citrus punch, so I'm not sure I fully love the yoghurt addition as I feel it almost dulls the lemon/lime flavour. However this really is a personal preference; some may really enjoy the yoghurt addition and it certainly hasn't stopped me from eating a lot of this cake.

Yoghurt, lemon and lime bundt cake
Recipe from Clandestine Cake Club Cookbook by Lynn Hill

375g self-raising flour
500g caster sugar
grated zest of 2 lemons
grated zest of 1 lime
250ml natural yoghurt
250ml sunflower oil
2 large eggs

syrup:
juice of 2 lemons
juice of 1 lime
3 tbsp caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 190C/Gas 5 (I must admit I thought that sounded to high a heat for a large bundt and actually turned it down to Gas 4.) Thoroughly grease and flour a 2.5-3 litre bundt tin, tapping out any excess flour over the sink.

Sift together the flour, sugar and citrus zests in one bowl. In a different bowl beat together the yoghurt, oil and eggs before adding to the other bowl and mixing everything together. Spoon the mixture into your bundt tin, spreading it out evenly, then bake in the centre of the oven for 45-50 minutes (although mine took an extra 15-20 minutes, probably because I had it baking at a lower temperature) until well risen, golden and a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

To make the syrup, put the lemon and lime juice into a small saucepan along with the sugar. Stir together over a medium heat until the sugar has completely dissolved. The recipe states to spoon the syrup over the cake when the cake is fresh out of the oven, leaving it to soak into the cake between additions and to remove from the tin after 15-20 minutes. However I would perhaps only pour half of the syrup over the cake whilst hot, wait half an hour or so until the cake is warm to turn it out and brush the remaining syrup over the cake so that it gets an even coating/soaking.

Recent birthday cakes

Just a quick post on a couple of birthday cakes I whipped up last week.

The first was a little vanilla sponge cake for my aunty's birthday on Saturday. My mum bought me two 6 inch round tins a couple of weeks ago and they make a very cute cake. So cute that I made a vanilla chai tea latte cake the same size for my sister in law's birthday on Sunday. As I didn't alter the quantities I ended up with enough left over batter to bake a tray of buns/fairy cakes too.

To cover up my scruffy edges I piped shell shapes back and forth around the top and bottom of the cake using a wilton 1M nozzle. Here's a useful video tutorial by Sweetapolita if you fancy giving it a shot. I also recommend heavy quantities of sprinkles. They cover all manner of uneven icing!

As I baked these cakes quickly I didn't really have enough time to do a proper crumb coat or level the sponges properly on either cakes, so there were some crumbs running through the icing. To be honest it didn't spoil the overall effect; both cakes still looked pretty.

Apologies for the slightly fuzzy images. I photographed these cakes in such a hurry that I'm not entirely convinced I had my camera on the correct settings.

6 inch vanilla sponge cake

I followed the standard recipe of equal quantities self-raising flour, golden caster sugar, margarine and eggs. For two 6 inch cakes I used the weight of 2 large eggs, about 150g

Preheat your oven to 180C/Gas 4. Beat your sugar and margarine together until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add your eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add a tablespoon of your flour with the last egg to stop the mixture from splitting. Add the rest of your flour, along with a tablespoon or so of milk and 1/4 teaspoon of good quality vanilla extract (or to taste). Mix together until everything is just incorporated. Divide the mixture between two tins and bake in the centre of the oven for roughly 25 minutes, or until golden and springy to touch. Leave to cool in the tins for 5 minutes before turning out to finish cooling on a wire rack.

Once cool sandwich together with jam and vanilla butter icing. I followed the Hummingbird Bakery's vanilla frosting, making 1 1/2 batches.