icklebabe.com, it's in the blog

He, he, he!… before you say it, I know my bad spelling is now  legendary but  I do know  it doesn’t actually spell blackberries ! no, to me blackberries are Autmn along with conkers, Halloween and toffee apples.

I love them! there is something very cosy and warm about their little purple loveliness. I remember picking them off the hedge rows on the way home from school and eating them in copious amounts of pies and custard laden puddings cooked by my Mum. I haven’t seen any growing naturally for years but when I did see them in their very unnatural habitat of our local Rainbow the other day (with a nice half price “buy me before I go mouldy” sticker) I had to buy them… 4 large punnets to be precise!

Now what to do with them…  I know some people have surgested that I am a bit obsessed with food and cooking. Several people have even eluded to there being more to life. But what they don’t realise is cooking is a great cover for not doing any house work, I discovered this a while back and haven’t looked back since. You ask Big J or any of the 3 kids if they would rather clean socks or cake and cake will win every time! And if I am cooking a lovely curry in the kitchen and Milly is throwing a wobbly well, I can’t possibly leave the garam marsala at such a crucial moment can I ? So with a giant pile of ironing to avoid I looked at my blackberries and headed for the kitchen!

I ate the first punnet before I’d even dug out my cookery books! And the kids grabbed the second so that was two down. With two lovely punnets left I flicked through my cookbooks. I have a great recipe for crumble ( just substitute some blackberries for some of the apples) and so that one was a no brainer. Then I found my lovely new “woman’s weekly cupcake and fairy cake” book, Sad…. I know, but it is really good! From bannana caramel cup cakes, ice cream cone cakes, to coconut kisses this book is a complete treasure! And there I found my next blackberry treat,  Giant Veryberry cupcakes! Yum! I had to change a few things about it to include my luverly  blackberries but still… YUM!

For the next hour I was happy in a whirl of flour and icing sugar. My cup cakes although not as pretty as the ones in the book tasted devine and the crumble was the perfect rainy day pudding. So what if the ironing is still sitting there and that I will probably have put on the odd pound, jelly belly friendly leggings are back in fashion and they don’t need ironing!

Icklebabe Giant Very Berry Cup Cakes

For berry butter cake:

125g butter, softened

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

150g caster sugar

2 eggs

1 big handful of blackberries

1 smaller handful of blueberries (not essential)

150g plain flour

60ml (approx) of milk

Sugared Fruit:

tiny handful of blackberries and the same of blueberries (if using)

1 egg white, beaten

2 tablespoons of icing sugar

Cream cheese frosting:

30g Butter

80g cream cheese

240g icing sugar

1) prepare sugared fruit.

2) Preheat oven to 170oc , line six large hole or 12 srandard muffin or fairy cake  pan with paper cases.

3) Cream together butter sugar and vanilla into bowl.

4) Stir in fruit and then sifted flour and milk, divide mixture among cases.

5) Bake large cakes about 45 mins, small ones about 35 mins. Put cakes on wire rack to cool.

6) Make cream frosting.

7) Spread cakes with frosting and decorate with sugared fruit.

To make Sugared Fruit:

Brush each fruit lightly with egg white and roll in icing sugar place on baking try and leave for 1 hour approx for sugar to go dry. Or while you baking the cakes

To make Cream cheese frosting:

beat butter and cheese in bowl until light and fluffy; gradually beat in sifted icing sugar.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 12:28 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.