Aimee's Black forest cupcakes

Well I'm honoured to be invited for a guest spot in Jules and Bailey's food blog!

After much talk of Black forest cherry cupcakes over Bailey's Birthday Weekend I became increasingly impatient and decided to give them a go myself... and i loved every minute of it!
I wanted to find some sort of kirch cherry type pie filling for the centre of the cupcakes but ASDA let me down, however i did find some very tasty black cherry conserve which turned out to be a perfect choice.

I decided to make the cupcakes chocolate like the traditional black forest gateau, and scooped a little spoonful of the black cherry jam in the centre.


Unfortunately in the first batch the conserve rised to the top but I'd made so much mix I made a second batch and they were perfect and it sat right in the middle, for a nice big jammy bit in every bite!

I decided on a white chocolate and fromage frais icing (also because we had been raving about fromage frais all weekend!) and I grated some white chocolate curls on the top. I bought ASDA's white chocolate because it cost much less than milky bar, but I was a little worried it might be a bit cheap and waxy tasting... however it turned out it was actually the best white chocolate I've ever tasted! I don't normally like eating chunks of white chocolate but I couldn't help myself it was so yummy!


I followed Jules' measurements for the recipe and added my own tweaks:

Recipe (makes 22)
110g butter
180g caster sugar
2 large eggs
125g self raising flour
120g plain flour
125ml semi-skimmed milk
Full bar of ASDA Dark Chocolate (bar a few cheeky squares me and mum tasted)

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C/ gas mark 4. Cream the butter and caster sugar together until there are no lumps, i used an awesome electric whisk which halves the effort. Add the eggs one at a time and mix. Combine the flours in a bowl. Add a third of the flour and mix in. Add a third of the milk and mix in. Repeat until all the flour and milk has been added. Melt the chocolate using half a pan of water with a glass bowl on top, put all the chocolate in the glass bowl and make sure the water doesn't touch the bottom of the glass or it's likely to burn the choc, fold the chocolate into the mixture.


I spooned one teaspoon of the mixture into the cases, then I added a spoonful of the black cherry conserve finally trying to cover all of the conserve with more mixture so it doesn't rise to the top. Bake for 20 mins.

For the icing
500g of ASDA White Chocolate (save 100g to make white chocolate curls)
65g of Butter
250g of icing sugar
2-3 tablespoons of Fromage Frais

Cream the butter and icing sugar, and add the fromage frais gradually so its not too liquidy. Finally add the white chocolate, mix and ice the cakes as soon as possible. Use a knife and scrap down the chocolate to make some curls to put on top.

Done!

Thankyou Jules and Bailey for my guest spot, it's been fun, hopefully I can make you a little something for when you come down at the weekend!

Love Aimee!