experimental Turkish Delight cupcakes

It must be a common problem, finding oneself with a surfeit of Turkish Delight. There is only so much you can eat before your teeth start to jangle, threatening to leap out of your mouth in protest.

What to do with it?

How about cupcakes [I thought]?

Not having a formal recipe to work from, I decided to try a few variants. Firstly, plain cupcakes with a square of Turkish Delight embedded in the centre before cooking; secondly, cake batter flavoured with rosewater, but without the TD; finally, a double hit of rosewater-flavoured cake plus a TD centre. I used my foolproof, if-it-were-at-school-it-would-be-a-straight-A-student cupcake recipe (courtesy of Janine Rose) as a base, and of course the homemade Turkish Delight.

All the cakes were highly edible (I didn’t actually eat every single one, but you know what I mean…), although I did make a few observations. The Turkish Delight cubes sank to the bottom – this was fine once the cakes had cooled, but when they were still warm the bases were essentially just a gooey mess; and it wasn’t really the unctuously melting middle I had envisaged. There wasn’t a huge difference between the ‘plain’ cake and the one infused with rosewater – perhaps I didn’t use enough? The icing was much more successful in adding flavour. All in all though, definitely a worthwhile experiment.

soggy bottom

I have included the recipe below, in case you fancy giving this a go. This quantity makes 24. Would love to hear your tasting notes/suggestions for improvements.

To be honest, plain cakes (sans TD) topped with some of this icing would be pretty darn fabulous.

Turkish Delight Cupcakes

250g unsalted butter, softened
250g caster sugar
3 eggs
290g self-raising flour
145ml full-fat milk
(24 1cm³ cubes of Turkish Delight – optional)
(2 tablespoons rosewater – optional)

for the Rosey Glacé Icing:

2.5 cups icing sugar
2 teaspoons (about 10g) butter, softened
2 tablespoons boiling water
2 teaspoons Monin Sirop de Rose
pieces of Turkish Delight to decorate

Preheat the oven to 165ºC.

Beat the butter and sugar together until pale and creamy, and gradually add the eggs. Fold in the sifted flour, then the milk, and the rosewater if using. Distribute the mixture among your cupcake cases (popping a cube of Turkish Delight into the centre of each heap of batter if you so wish – making sure the contents of the case isn’t higher than about two-thirds of the height of the cake case) and bake for 18 minutes or until the tops are golden.

To make the icing, sift the icing sugar into a bowl. Add the soft butter, the boiling water and the rose syrup and beat everything together vigorously with a wooden spoon. It should have a lovely pinkish hue and be seductively shiny. Use immediately, spreading onto the cakes with a palette knife dipped periodically into a mug of hot water, to ensure a smooth finish. Top the cakes with a piece of Turkish Delight while the icing is still wet.