These Battenberg-inspired cupcakes are deliciously moist and tasty, with a colourful surprise inside. Some of the ingredients might raise an eyebrow too.
The Recipe
For The CakesIngredients:
- 175g Self raising flour
- 100g Rice flour
- 200g Caster Sugar
- 200g Soft butter or vegetable baking fat
- 100g Cooked Beetroot, pureed
- 100g Raw carrot, grated
- 3 Eggs
- 2 Heaped tablespoons cocoa powder
- Half a teaspoon ground turmeric
- 1 Teaspoon almond (or if you prefer, vanilla) extract To Decorate
- 200g Marzipan (or if you prefer, fondant cake icing)
- Strawberry jam
Method:
Put the flour, rice flour, fat, sugar, eggs and almond or vanilla flavouring in a large bowl.
Mix together with an electric whisk for a few moments - work thoroughly enough to get all the wet and dry ingredients to mix, but don't worry if there are a few small lumps of fat visible at this stage.
Divide the mixture in half, into another bowl.
This division doesn't have to be terribly precise - just judge it by eye.
Add the carrot and turmeric to one bowl, Add the beetroot and chocolate to the other.
Mix each bowl again with the electric whisk until fully combined. Rinse the blades between mixes to avoid contaminating the colours.
Preheat the oven to 180C
Spoon each of the mixes into its own polythene bag, tie off the top loosely, then cut a small piece off one of the bottom corners - to make it into a piping bag.
Be careful not to let the little pieces of plastic you cut off the bags find their way into the cakes.
Set 12 paper cases in a muffin tray.
Carefully squeeze a blob of one mix into the middle of each case, then squeeze a ring of the other colour around it.
Repeat the process, but reversing the colours for a second layer
Each layer is about 1cm thick (so that's about 2cm of unbaked cake batter in each case) - that should just about use up all of the mix.
Place in the oven and set a timer for 12 minutes
If the cakes are done, a toothpick pushed into the middle of the cake should come out clean. If it's sticky with uncooked mix, return the cakes to the oven for another couple of minutes, then test again.
Leave the cakes to cool for half an hour before decorating them.
Roll out the marzipan to about 3 or 4mm thick. Use icing (powdered) sugar to prevent it sticking to the work surface or rolling pin.
Using a fluted cutter, or the rim of a suitably-sized glass, cut circles about the same size as the tops of the cakes.
Spread a little jam on the top of each of the cakes (if there are cracks in the top surface, you can use the jam to fill them).
Apply the marzipan circles on top of the jam, pressing them down to conform to the curved top of the cake.
I quite like the plain, smooth appearance of the marzipan, but if you prefer, you could decorate it by imprinting with a pattern, or drizzling thin threads of melted chocolate across it.
I use silicone cake trays and made some in mini-loaf shapes, half carrot and half beetroot.