Cupcake hero – Cranberry and lemon cupcakes with cranberry whipped cream

This is my first time entering Cupcake hero. I’m not into the whole cupcake making thing myself but I love to look at pretty cupcake pictures on Flickr. So when I read about this foodblogging event by Laurie from Quirky Cupcake I thought why not give it a try. This month’s theme is cranberries. I didn’t feel like using fresh or dried cranberries and decided on using cranberry juice (I think I was inspired by the carrot juice for the carrot ganache). For the cake I used a muffin recipe that I made a while back and used cranberry juice instead of the coffee I used last time. The juice made the batter nice and pink. Also I added some lemon zest and melted white chocolate to the batter (Peabody’s white chocolate cranberry cake was my inspiration for the white chocolate). The frosting is whipped cream with cranberry juice. Somehow you can whip that. The good thing is that is firms up a bit in the fridge (at least it was still firm after 3 hours, don’t know after that because we ate them at that point). I wasn’t sure if the cake would turn out ok but the taste was better than I expected. It reminded me of cherry clafoutis, apparently the combination of baked cranberry juice and lemon zest does that. I couldn’t detect the white chocolate but I’m sure it wouldn’t have been as good without it. The texture could have been better though, they were on the dense side. I didn’t want the tops to crack so I didn’t use too much baking powder. And the baking powder had sort of bubbled out when I spooned the last bit of batter into the paper liners (maybe I should have used baking soda? I sort of remember that you use that with acidic things….or do you use baking powder for that? I’m no expert, in the Netherlands most people haven’t even heard of baking soda, everybody uses baking powder). The inside of the cake was still a bit pinkish after baking 🙂

The whipping cream is easy to make and is nice and tart and pink. It reminded me of an old-fashioned Dutch dessert called Haagse Bluf that is made by whipping egg whites, sugar and red currant juice.
The combination of the cake and frosting is ok but not great. For my taste it was a bit too much cranberries. In retrospect I’d opt for either cranberries in the cake or the frosting.

Cranberry cakes

makes 12

110 g (4 oz) flour
½ ts baking powder
½ ts vanilla
75 g (2 â…” oz) sugar
50 g (1 ¾ oz) white chocolate, chopped
25 g (1 oz) butter
1 egg
125 ml (½ cup) cranberry juice

Preheat the oven at 180°C (355°C). Line a muffin tin with paper liners.
Combine the flour, baking powder, vanilla and sugar in a medium bowl. Stir to mix. Melt the chocolate with the butter in the microwave or au bain marie. Put in a small bowl. Add the egg and stir until combined. Add the
juice and stir until combined. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until combined (will be lumpy). Spoon the mixture into the paper cups. Bake for about 25 minutes. Allow to cool on a wire rack.

Cranberry whipped cream

250 ml (1 cup) whipping cream
25 g (1 oz) sugar
125 ml (½ cup) cranberry juice

Whip (on low speed) the cream and sugar to soft peaks. While still whipping, add the juice a
little at a time. Continue beating until more or less stiff.

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