On the Second day of Christmas, my True Love baked for me…
Remember that strange white coconutty stuff of the antipodiean old school which has cherries and maybe nuts inside and is bound together (a little greasily) with copha? It’s called White Christmas. It’s white, and you have it at Christmas, and it is NOT what I am baking for you today.
I’m completely sure that White Christmas was invented before white chocolate was really that well known about. Certainly, clusters of this stuff was known to me in my childhood, sitting in pretty paper cases, and I confess that it wasn’t half disgusting to eat. Only back then I didn’t know that it’s made from hardened palm oil, and probably pretty bad for you.
Luckily, I’m here to bring the essence of White Christmas to you in a fresh flavoured, madly moreish cupcake, full of fresh cranberries, thread coconut, pistachios and blood orange zest.
A simple drizzle of plain fondant frosting is all they need to create a White Christmas worth dreaming about.
White Christmas Cupcakes
Makes 12 cupcakes
ingredients
125g butter
125g sugar
2 eggs
165g self raising flour
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1 1/2 cups frozen cranberries, thawed
1/4 cup pistachios, chopped roughly
about 125mL of white liquid fondant, to decorate (you can buy liquid fondant from cake decorating shops)
coloured cachous/pistachios for decoration
mixing
Line a 12 hole muffin pan with cupcake cases and spray cases lightly with non-stick spray.
Beat the butter and sugar together until light and creamy. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Add the flour and milk and beat until very fluffy and well combined. Stir in the coconut, thawed cranberries and pistachios.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared cupcake cases and bake at 175 degrees Celsius for about 25 minutes. Let the cupcakes cool.
Heat the fondant gently until it is just at pouring consistency. If you are very careful you can use a microwave for this step – heat for 5 seconds at a time and stir, but take care! overheating the fondant will cause the tiny sugar crystals inside to dissolve, leaving you with unusable syrup. The alternative to using the microwave is to heat the fondant gently in a glass bowl over simmering water.
Spoon about 10mL of fondant over each cupcake and decorate with coloured cachous or pistachios.
Enjoy!xxx
