A bright swirl of raspberry buttercream is a great finishing touch to these raspberry and coconut cupcakes.

The last recipe I’ll post for a while featuring raspberries (promise!). One bonus of this one is that it allows you to use fresh or frozen raspberries. The original recipe for these raspberry and coconut cupcakes comes from the BBC goodfood website.

Ingredients (makes 12 raspberry and coconut cupcakes):

• 140 g / 5 oz butter or margarine
• 140 g / 5 oz caster sugar
• 2 eggs (medium or large will be fine)
• 175 g / 6 oz self-raising flour
• 50 g / 2 oz desiccated coconut
• 0.5 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 tbsp milk
• 140 g / 5 oz raspberries, fresh or frozen

For the raspberry buttercream

• 280 g / 10 oz icing sugar, sifted
• 85 g / 3 oz butter
• 4 tbsp raspberry coulis (you can buy this ready-made, or push fresh raspberries through a sieve to get the juice)
• a little desiccated or shredded coconut to decorate

Method:

Put 12 deep, paper cupcake cases into a muffin tin. Pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees C (170 fan)/ Gas Mark 5 / 375 degrees F.

The original recipe tells you to put all the cupcake ingredients except the raspberries in a bowl (or mixer) and beat together until combined and smooth, then stir through the raspberries. You can do it this way, especially if you’re in a hurry. I prefer to cream the butter and sugar first, beating them together until smooth. I add the eggs, beating the cupcake mixture between each addition. Then add the milk, vanilla essence, coconut and flour and mix until all the ingredients are combined. Finally, add the raspberries and fold through gently.

Divide the mixture between your paper cupcake cases.

Bake for 20-25 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 finish cool.

While your raspberry cupcakes are cooling, make the raspberry buttercream. Beat together the icing sugar and butter (go slowly at first so you don’t get covered in a cloud of icing sugar). Add the raspberry juice and stir through until you have an even-coloured pink buttercream.

Either spread the buttercream onto your raspberry and coconut cupcakes using a knife, or pipe it on.

Sprinkle the cupcakes with a little desiccated or shredded coconut to finish.

Store your raspberry and coconut cupcakes in an air-tight container in a cool place and eat within 3 days.

---

If you would like other recipes featuring raspberry:

 

Raspberry ripple layer cake with raspberry buttercream filling (no bits!).

 

 

 

 

Raspberry ripple cupcakes with raspberry buttercream filling (no bits!).

 

 

 

 

Raspberry and white chocolate blondies.

 

 

 

---

Claire Huston / Art and Soul