First Day of Spring

 Guys!! It’s officially the first day of Spring and, while we do concede that we might be being slightly overoptimistic, today does have a certain Spring-like air about it. We are thrilled!

The sun is shining, blossom is on the trees, there is a vase of daffodils on my table, I’m imagining rabbits with white tails cheerfully hopping somewhere and I for one am wearing my favourite flowery dress.

(One should always be suitably dressed for the occasion, I feel)

Yes, Spring may, might, possibly finallyyy (and temporarily I’m sure) have sprung. And so on this jolly day we welcome all the great things that come with the entrance of Spring. I’m envisaging lamb for lazy Sunday lunches, hotcross buns with melted butter in the morning sun, wearing my new pastel pink blazer, going for premature picnics and eating Easter eggs. Woo!!

So, to celebrate this long awaited day, I thought I’d make something suitably cheerful; Sweet and Simple Strawberry Cupcakes. These are very quick and easy to make, and bring a little extra bit of (sweet) Spring Cheer to today.

This is the first recipe I’ve tried from my newly bought ‘Saved by Cake’, and am so far loving it

 Ingredients:

200g fresh strawberries

100ml sunflower oil

90g caster sugar

2 eggs

180g plain flour

Small teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

 For the icing:

300g icing sugar

2 tablespoons water

Red gel food colouring

1.      Preheat the oven to 180c and line a cupcake tray with paper cases. The recipe said that this made 12, but those cupcakes would have been ginormous!! Like, suitable for the BFG. So I did two batches.

2.      Wash and hull the strawberries and mash until all pulpy and look a bit like smoothie. (I used a hand held blender, but that’s mainly just because I LOVE the noise it makes. Actually, I love everything about the hand held blender, it’s so much fun. But if you don’t have one - totally invest. Hours of amusement at your fingertips – a potato masher or even the humble fork will do perfectly).

3.      Whisk the eggs and then put the oil and sugar in a bowl. Add the eggs and whisk for a few minutes, until the mix starts to look ‘caramelly’. I didn’t fully understand this description of what my mixture should look like – caramelly in colour? Or consistency? Or both maybe? Who really knew. So I just whisked for a bit until it looked like what I felt I’d like my perfect caramel to look like. Yeah, not overly helpful on my part either. Don’t think it’s of top importance. Just go with it.

4.      Add the pulped strawberries to the ‘caramel’ mixture and then sieve in the flour and bicarbonate of soda. Take your time to fold through. This is always my favourite part of cake making. Take all the time in the world. Enjoy. Relax. Think jolly thoughts about Spring.

5.      Pour the mixture into the cases. This mixture is quite thin – one might almost call it ‘batter’. Oh yes – and it’s meant to look like that so don’t panic over your unusually thin cake mix. Bake for about 20 minutes.

6.       I used your basic glace icing to decorate:

Sieve the icing sugar into a bowl. I’d recommend exercising more patience  than I can ever manage when you do this i.e do it slowly. I rush and rush and rush (excitement at cake makes me rush. What can I say?) and then the icing sugar billows into a massive cloud and gets all over the kitchen. And my clothes. And my hair. And the dog. And (I’ve no idea how) the sofa.

Gradually add the water and whisk until you’ve got the desired consistency.

Then stir in the food colouring gel (I would highly recommend using gel, not liquid, because liquid can make the icing taste a bit… funny. Not nasty exactly, just a bit funny. And it can affect the consistency of the icing)

Spread over your cakes!! I popped a little slice of strawberry on the top too, but you can do whatever you like. Seriously, go mental!! You have my permission. We’re celebrating Spring here! Edible glitter, chocolate stars, sprinkles, sugar balls, icing flower decorations… you get the picture.

 Spring has undoubtedly arrived in all it's flowers, sun and strawberry cupcake glory

These will make the arrival of Spring even better, trust me. (As will the hotcross buns I aim to make shortly. Watch this space)

Happy Spring!

Ros - x