Gloverly Cupcakes

Last year was a bumper year for blackberries, I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by beautiful countryside in Kent and plenty of hedgerows filled with blackberries. I think I picked around 20kg last year and really enjoyed trying all sorts of recipes to use them up. I’ve been out a couple of times this year so it’s time to start making some goodies from all of my pickings. I found a recipe for walnut biscuits and adapted it to sandwich the biscuits together with a yummy blackberry and white chocolate ganache.

Walnut Biscuits

225g butter

50g light soft brown sugar

50g granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

220g plain flour

100g walnuts

• Pre-heat the oven to 175 degrees centigrade and line a couple of baking trays.
• Using a food processor, blitz the walnuts till they are very finely chopped.
• Mix together the butter, sugars, vanilla in a bowl, then add the flour and walnuts and mix until it comes together to form a dough.
• Roll the dough into balls about 3cm in diameter, place them on the baking trays about 3cm apart.
• Flatten the balls to about 1.5-2cm using the palm of your hand.
• Bake in the oven for 20 mins, turning after 10 mins to make sure they are baked evenly and golden brown.
• Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 5-10 mins on the trays before transferring to a cooling rack.

Blackberry and White Chocolate Ganache

450g blackberries

400g white chocolate

• Puree the blackberries, and then pass the puree through a fine sieve to remove all the seeds and tough pulp
• Place the puree into a small saucepan
• Break the white chocolate up and put into a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water ensuring that the bottom of the bowl doesn’t touch the water
• While the chocolate is melting, slowly heat the blackberry puree
• Stir the chocolate constantly and once is has all melted, remove from heat and pour in your warm puree 1/3 at a time, stirring well after each addition
• Once the ganache has come together, cover with clingfilm and leave to cool
• You need to ganache to be soft in order to sandwich the biscuits together so don’t put it in the fridge or it will be too hard.
• To assemble the biscuits, make sure they are completely cool. Using a teaspoon place a small amount of the ganache onto a biscuits and spread out slightly.
• Place a similar sized biscuit on top and press down lightly, but not too hard otherwise all the ganache will come out of the sides.
• Once done, dust lightly with icing sugar.

The walnut biscuits are lovely and crumbly and go very well with the ganache filling. You will end up having some ganache left over, so I’ll be posting a recipe/idea to use it up on here over the next couple of weeks.