Custard Cream Cupcakes

I've decided to put my recently acquired spare time to good use, by which I mean that I have begun on an epic amount of baking and crafting. This also means that I have finally had time to review the "new" Hummingbird Bakery cookbook that I had back in March.

As with both of the other two Hummingbird books - The Hummingbird Bakery and Cake Days - this most recent offering is packed with gorgeous recipes for classics with a modern twist. Of course, there is another chapter on the cupcakes that have made the bakery famous, however, this time the bakery have moved on from their previous vanilla and red velvet flavours to give us something a little more adventurous to sink our teeth into. There's Jaffa Cake Cupcakes and Custard Cream Cupcakes from their Biscuit Tin range; Praline, Cinder Toffee and Popcorn; and classic desserts like Key Lime Pie and Eton Mess in cupcake incarnation. All of these are beautifully illustrated by fantastic pictures with the classic Hummingbird quirky presentation.

I chose to attempt the Custard Cream Cupcakes because they are one of my absolute favorite biscuit flavours ever ever ever. Just after malted milks. I was really interested in how they had manage to incorporate the flavours of the biscuit into something cakey and lovely.

I always find that the recipes in the Hummingbird books are slightly harder than in other cookbooks. For instance, a "normal" cupcake would be a vanilla/chocolate/lemon flavour made with just butter, eggs, sugar and flour whilst the Hummingbird books use milk in most of their recipes - sometimes even buttermilk in their cakes - in search of the ultimate soft/moist texture. The cakes themselves also seem to be a bit more adventurous and as a result, slightly more difficult to pull off.

The cakes that I tried were not just the usual sponge + frosting either. Once the cakes had cooled I had to cut  small hole out of the middle that was then filled with custard before a bit of cake was replaced on top to make a gooey runny centre. The actual Hummingbird recipe dictated the exact custard recipe (and did the same for the biscuit topping), but, being lazy, I improvised and just used packet custard and pre-bought biscuits. I like to think that its a sort of cheats version!

Anyway, seeing as I have now made two cakes from this book (remember the Cookies and Cream cake that I made for the Musoc Bakeoff?) I now feel "qualified" to give my opinion on the cookbook! I have always loved this series and was massively excited to flick through the latest one. I've come to the conclusion that my excitement was completely justified - this book is just as fabulous as its predecessors and I would thoroughly recommend that you all go out and buy buy buy!

And make these cupcakes.... they're really really good!

In other foody news, I've been out for yet another meal since my catch up post and become the official chair person of Bangor University Music Society (Find us on Facebook and Twitter - shameless plug!). In-fact, I'm just about to sign off and head out for an all you can eat carvery aswell! God, I love food. Anyway, I'm now obsessed with mackerel after trying it for the first time ever on Thursday. I can't understand how I have missed out - I've bought all the ingredients to recreate this mackerel nicoise salad. Yum yum yum!