Recipe | Raspberry cupcakes with orange sugar drizzle

The orange sugar drizzle is the perfect topping for these simple raspberry cupcakes.

My parents grow raspberries and had a huge crop this year. This is my excuse for featuring a raspberry cupcake recipe this week and next. Apologies to those who don’t like the flavour or cakes with any “bits” in them! The original recipe for these raspberry and orange sugar drizzles cupcakes comes from the BBC goodfood website.

Ingredients (makes 12 raspberry and orange sugar drizzle cupcakes):

200 g / 7 oz butter or margarine
200 g / 7 oz caster sugar
4 eggs (medium or large will be fine)
200 g / 7 oz self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
3 tbsp milk (use the milk you already have in the fridge)
Finely-grated zest of 1 medium orange
150 g / 5 oz raspberries, slightly crushed

For the orange sugar drizzle

Juice from 1 medium orange
4 tbsp caster sugar

Method:

Put 12 cupcake cases into your muffin tin. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C (160 fan)/ Gas Mark 4 / 350 degrees F.

The original recipe writer is a fan of the all-in-one method and puts all the ingredients save the raspberries into a mixing bowl and blends together. You can do this, but I always prefer to cream the butter and sugar first. Feel free to ignore all my separate steps and just put everything in a bowl and mix it together, particularly if you have an electric mixer to help you.

Using an electric mixer (or hand beaters), beat the butter for a few minutes until it is paler in colour. Add the sugar and beat again for 3-5 minutes until the mixture is fluffy. Add the eggs, beating your mixture after adding each egg. Add the milk, orange zest, flour and baking powder and stir through until combined. Finally, add the raspberries and fold through the mixture gently.

Divide the raspberry cupcake mixture between your cupcake cases. I had enough for a thirteenth cupcake, so you’ll definitely have enough mixture to be generous.

Bake for about 20 minutes until the raspberry cupcakes start to brown on top and a knife inserted into the middle of one comes out clean.

Take the raspberry cupcakes out of the oven, leave to cool in the tin for about 10 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool.

Quickly make the drizzle while your raspberry cupcakes are still warm. Put the caster sugar in a bowl and stir in the orange juice.

I drizzled a teaspoonful of the topping onto each cupcake and used a pastry brush to spread it over the top. This works best when the cupcakes are still warm; the heat will help the drizzle to run to the edges of the cupcake case.

Leave the raspberry cupcakes to cool and the orange drizzle to harden.