Summer Berry Cupcakes

 Hello there! My recent post on lemon cupcakes seemed to go down really well, so I thought I would share another cupcake recipe with you! As it's summer (although the weather at the moment seems to be saying otherwise) I love that strawberries and raspberries are now in season. With this I thought why not combine two things that I love? And so this is how my Summer Berry Cupcakes came about! These not only look amazing but taste amazing too. I found the basic recipe on the BBC Food site, but I've adapted it and changed it to fit in with what I wanted to do!

Ingredients 

For the cupcakes:

180g margarine/butter

180g caster sugar

180g plain flour

1 heaped teaspoon baking powder

2 eggs (4 Bantam eggs)

150g raspberries 

Splash of milk

For the icing:

75g softened butter

150g icing sugar

Handful of strawberries 

 Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4 (you may want to do this later if your oven is quick to heat up) and line your cupcake tray with cases. This mixture made 16 cupcakes.

 Put all of the ingredients for the cupcakes (except the raspberries) into a mixing bowl. Mix these together either in a food processor or by using an electric hand whisk. Mix until all the ingredients are just combined.

 Then (on my dad's recommendation) put the raspberries into a sieve and press them so that the juice goes into the bowl. This way the cupcakes have the raspberry flavour but on eating a cake you won't come across a load of pips!

 

 

 Once you have pressed all of the raspberries into the mixture, give this another mix with the whisk. The raspberries not only give the cakes a flavour, but also a slight pink colour. Spoon the mixture into the cases to about 2/3 full, and put in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until risen (if you can poke something like a small knife inside the cake and no mixture comes out then they are ready!) Leave to cool when ready.

 

 Once the cupcakes have cooled you can move onto the icing. I made simple butter icing and then sliced some strawberries to decorate the top with.  It looks like a lot of effort has gone into making these cupcakes but they're actually really easy to do! If you are having a summer party or BBQ I think these would be perfect and will impress your friends. The mix of raspberries and the strawberries on top gave a lovely flavour and I know that I will definitely be making these again!

 

 As always if you have a go at making these I would love to see them just tweet me @jesslouisekeen! These are really easy to adapt to your own preferences and flavourings, so everyone can have a go! The Great British Bake Off is back on the 5th August so I'm sure I will be doing a few more baking posts before the summer is out!

Love Jess xxx