Gloverly Cupcakes

It’s been a while since I made some cupcakes, especially ones that were an usual flavour and not just vanilla/chocolate with decorations on. So when I decided to go down to London for the afternoon to meet my best friend’s baby, I offered to make some cupcakes to take. I’ve already got a lot of rhubarb (I’ve made rhubarb and raspberry Frangipane tart, rhubarb crumble muffins, and I still have about 750g left!) so I decided to bake something with rhubarb.I made this recipe up but it was inspired by the flavours in this cake that I found on Pinterest the other day. I’m yet to try a cupcake but I’ve sampled all the components and they taste pretty good so I’m hoping the complete cupcakes do as well! I made a batch of vanilla cupcakes (18). When they came out the oven I brushed them with quite a bit of some orange rhubarb syrup left over from poaching rhubarb (as in this recipe). I then roasted about 250g of rhubarb, cut into small pieces, with a couple of tablespoons of sugar at 170 C for about 15 minutes (keep checking it and take it out when just tender). The pistachio crumb was made using some left over chopped pistachios (about 1/4 cup), 20g sugar, 20g plain flour and 15g butter all rubbed together. When it looked like crumble I spread it out on a baking tray and cooked it while the rhubarb was baking – it probably didn’t need quite as long (about 10mins) and I mixed it up a few times to stop it browning at the edges too much.

I made a caramel (as per the original recipe that inspired me – it makes way too much but you can use it for other stuff!). When it had cooled I stirred a big tablespoon of it into about 1/2 the rhubarb and mashed it up. I cored the cupcakes and put a teaspoon in the middle of each.

Each cupcake was then topped with a caramel cream cheese buttercream – I mixed 450g icing sugar with 75g soften butter until it looked like breadcrumbs and then beat in 200g full-fat cream cheese and 2 very heaped tablespoons of the cold caramel.

To assemble the cupcakes I piped the icing on top, put 3 pieces of rhubarb on each with a bit of the syrup that was in the tin, drizzled a bit a caramel (I had to warm it slightly) and then sprinkled with the pistachio crumb.