Lime Cupcakes

I was asked to create some sample cupcakes this weekend, one of the flavours was lime, so I set about thinking what the best way to put this in was. I decided to try a few different methods and leave it to the couple to decide which their favourite was. 

For all the cupcakes I made a lime basic cupcake:

300g Butter

300g Caster Sugar

300g Self raising flour

6 Eggs

I baked these at 180oC for around 30 minutes and then left to cool. 

Cooling cupcakes

While they were cooling I made a lemon and lime curd for the centre of the cakes. 

Zest and Juice of 2 limes

Zest and Juice of 3 lemons

250g Caster Sugar

125g Butter

4 Eggs

Combine the zest, juice, sugar and butter in a bowl over gently simmering water. Stir until the sugar and butter have melted. 

Lightly whisk the eggs and then add to the mixture. Continue stirring until the mixture has started to thicken and is coating the back of the spoon. Set aside and leave to cool, as it cools it'll thicken even further. 

Lemon and lime curd

I cut the tops of the cupcakes off, so they were level, and a small disc in the centre. I filled this with some of the curd. 

The topping is where the cakes differed. I decided to try two varieties of meringue and one with butter cream. 

Firstly I made a soft merringue. I combined 1 egg white with 50g Caster Sugar in a bowl over simmering water. I whisked this until the sugar had dissolved. Took it off the heat and whisked until the mixture was forming soft peaks. This was then piped onto the prepared cupcakes. 

Secondly I made a baked meringue topping. 1 egg white was combined with 50g Caster sugar and whisked until forming soft peaks. This was piped onto the cakes and then placed under a hot grill until the top was golden. 

Finally I made Italian meringue buttercream and stirred in some lime curd, from above. I piped this onto the cakes. 

Baked and soft meringue lime cupcakes

I used little coloured sugar paste shapes to distinguish between the cakes and have sent them off to Wales for the testing. The verdict from this kitchen is the baked meringue is the favourite but we shall see which they prefer. 

Iced Lime Traybake

I fancied doing some baking today, ichy fingers!! so with my mum's help we managed to shop for the ingredients and I mustered the energy to make these for dessert today. Several recipes in Mary Berry's book caught my eye but I fancied something lime so the Iced Lime Traybake, p 464, hit the spot. 

It is a very straightforward recipe, a basic sponge recipe flavoured with lime zest topped with a lime icing. For the sponge recipe I used marg instead of butter, cutting costs, but everything else was as stated in the book. It's an all in one recipe so this involves putting marg, sugar, flour, baking powder, 3 eggs, milk and some lime zest into a bowl then whisking it all together. 

Everything in the bowl ready to be whisked

Once it was all mixed together I placed it in a prepared tin and baked it in the oven. I just used baking paper to line the tin roughly so I was expecting the edges to not be very good. 

Ready to go in the oven

The cake took around 45 minutes to cook in the oven, fairly close to the time stated in the recipe. It came out looking golden brown and the inserted knife came out clean. 

Fresh out the oven

The cake was left to cool and then it was ready to ice. The icing was a simple mix of lime juice and icing sugar. However, I didn't have enough juice to make icing so I had to add a little water to moisten the icing up so that it was spreadable. The icing was then poured onto the cake and smoothed roughly, again I didn't take any great care with the appearance as it was just for us. As I didn't have any zest left to decorate the top I used some newly purchased sprinkles to decorate the top. 

Cake iced and decorated

The bake was then ready to be eaten, Gary cut the cake into squares and we dived into out squares. 

My slice of cake

The cake was a really lovely texture, it was light and fluffy, beautifully risen but unfortunately it didn't taste of lime. The same could be said for the icing, it just wasn't strong enough tasting. If I had wanted a plain sponge this would have been perfect, but I didn't. 

My mark out of 10 is only 6 as it didn't fill the lime requirement and for once Gary has given it a higher score of 7, so that's a total of 13. Both of us agree that the sponge is very nice but could do with a much strong lime flavour. 

This is something I'd like to make again but next time use more limes for flavour.