However, I do find apricots a deceptive fruit - beautifully blushed and ripe and looking stunning. Then the let down of the first bite as the flesh is woolly and tasteless. My solution: cook them! This recipe was a take on the Hummingbird bakery vanilla cupcake recipe. I bought the apricots and thought how lovely they'd look on the base of cupcakes - like little sunshines to brighten up the dull day I made them on. I then looked in the book again and was surprised to find a recipe along very similar lines, but using tinned sliced peaches, chopped up. I like my version, but tinned apricots would be great in the winter - I might come back to that idea!
The first thing I did was to halve and roast the apricots until tender. I wanted them to dry out slightly so as not to release too much juice and make the cake soggy. It worked quite well, but I might do them longer next time. I can't really remember how long they took - I was cooking something else at the same time. I allowed them to cool before placing rounded side down in the muffin cases, as shown in the picture above.
I then made up the vanilla cupcake recipe:
Hummingbird Bakery Vanilla Cupcakes
Ingredients
120g plain flour
140g caster sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
a pinch salt
40g soft unsalted butter
120ml semi-skimmed milk
1 egg
3/4 tsp vanilla extract
Method
- Preheat oven to 170C/Gas 3. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper cases.
- Put the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter in a large bowl and beat on a slow speed with an electric hand mixer (or put into a stand mixer - oh for a stand mixer!!!) until well combined and a sandy consistency. This was messy and got all over the work top. I found the best way of doing it was to cream the butter and sugar together manually with a fork just until they seemed to be combining slightly.
- Whisk the egg, milk and vanilla extract together in a jug and add half to the dry mixture. Beat slowly to combine and then more quickly to beat out any lumps.
- Add the remaining liquid mixture and beat slowly to combine. Do not overmix.
- Transfer (I found semi-pouring/semi-spooning the best way to go as the mixture is quite slack) the mixture into the cake cases until 2/3 full and bake for 20-25 minutes in the preheated oven until they spring back to the touch. A skewer inserted should come out clean
-Remove from oven and allow to cool on a wire rack.
- When cool, carefully remove the cases, revealing the delicious apricot at the bottom.
I really enjoyed these, as did my work colleagues. They were just the right size for a mid morning or afternoon snack without putting you off the next meal. The contrast of the wonderfully light and sweet vanilla sponge with the slightly tart (as I didn't sweeten the apricots when I baked them) and juicily moist apricot was truly delicious, and I will be making these again!
My current colleagues are on the Weightwatchers diet and so I used semi-skimmed milk, which together with the small amount of butter in the recipe mean that these were only 2 or 2.5 points each (I can't quite remember - sorry!). So that made them popular too!!!
5 comments:
grrr... cant help but starve..
I remember well what different job rotations used to be like - exhaustion comes to mind here...
Anyway those cupcakes look amazing - I'd love to try one or ....two ;0)
Apricot flesh is quite tough, but I do find myself craving dried apricots and apricot jam quite often. Ooh and in a dessert, it'd be very tasty!
I know what you mean about apricots they look fabulous and then disappoint on taste.
I love your idea for using them up.
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