With a five month old baby it's rare that i have time to give baking my full attention, but as we we're spending the weekend with hubby's parents it seemed like the ideal opportunity to get cracking with the perfect cupcake quest.
Hubby's lovely mum had bought me Primrose Bakery's new book 'Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery' and i chose their Coconut sponge with vanilla buttercream icing after requests from the family.
Martha Swift and Lisa Thomas originally started baking cupcakes for children's parties, but their popularity means they are now more used to catering for a-list parties. Which surely makes for a promising start to finding the cupcake mecca?
The coconut and vanilla combination is supposed to resemble coconut ice, but thankfully the end result wasn't too sweet and sickly.
Were they any good?
The sponge recipe required both plain and self raising flour (but no baking powder) which made for a denser cupcake than i'm used to. If i made them again i'd reduce the amount of plain flour to make the sponge a lighter, fluffier texture.
I also found the timings and temperature settings slightly out at 160c for a fan oven for 25 minutes. I really don't think that there needs to be a 20c difference for the fan and it would have been better to raise the temperature up to 180c. As it stood i ended up cooking the cupcakes for an extra 5 minutes.
The vanilla buttercream is probably one of the best variations i've tasted, i've previously just used butter, icing sugar and water which always seems to make for a runny buttercream where extra sugar is needed, but this variation used milk and 500g of icing sugar which made the buttercream exactly the right consistency.
Overall the density of the coconut and the sweetness of the vanilla buttercream made for a yummy combination and the batch was quickly snaffled up over the evening - which is always a good sign!
Baking Housewife Rating: 8/10
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