Wimbledon cupcakes

Today I went to watch the tennis. Awesome day on Centre Court, especially the champagne before midday. We took homemade sushi for lunch and some of these cupcakes, which were actually something of an experiment – a successful one, fortunately.

If strawberries are out of season, or if you can’t get to the shops, or whatever, I reckon you could substitute a couple of teaspoons of strawberry jam for the fresh strawberries in the icing. (Who doesn’t have a jar of jam lurking at the back of their fridge?)

These fruity delights are best eaten the same day they are made.

Strawberry and Vanilla Cupcakes a.k.a. Wimbledon Cupcakes

For the cakes:

250g unsalted butter or margarine
250g caster sugar (or vanilla sugar)
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
290g self-raising flour
145ml full-fat milk

For the strawberry glacé icing:

100g icing sugar
3-4 ripe strawberries, hulled
extra strawberries, for decoration

Preheat oven to 165°C. Beat butter/margarine and sugar together until pale and creamy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat in. Stir in the vanilla.

Fold in the sifted flour and then the milk. Put mixture into cupcake cases (fill each one about two-thirds of the way to the top) and bake for 18 minutes or until a skewer inserted into a cake comes out clean. Cool the cakes on a wire rack.

To make the icing, whizz the strawberries in a blender until mushy.

from this...

...to this

Sieve the icing sugar into a bowl and gradually add the strawberry purée, ensuring that the mixture doesn’t become too runny. When it has the right consistency, spoon it over the cooled cupcakes and decorate each one with a piece of strawberry.

Makes about 24. (I used muffin-size paper cases, which made 15 cakes that needed 25 minutes in the oven.)

Hot debate topic of the day: whether Serena’s bright red shorts, worn under her tennis dress, breached the Wimbledon dress code…

go Serena!