Pimm’s No.1 Cup-cakes
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Whatto, it must be Pimm’s o’clock! For me, summer is officially marked by the first Pimm’s of the season, usually shared with friends at the Royal Norfolk Show or previously on Southsea Common. I love the refreshing blend of fruits that you put in it: strawberry, cucumber, orange and mint. I’ve been thinking about how best to combine all the flavours into a cupcake and this is the result. The buttercreams all work really well, none of them overpowered each other including the cucumber which I thought would be awful because it’s quite watery. Make it into a “virgin cupcake” (no alcohol) by warming the Pimm’s in a saucepan on the hob for a minute or so. If you wanted to strengthen the flavour of the Pimm’s, then I would suggest using more than specified and reducing it in a saucepan on the hob.
Ingredients
For the cupcake
- My basic cupcake recipe
- 60ml Pimm’s
For all buttercream
- 400g icing sugar
- 250g butter
For the strawberry buttercream
- 8 strawberries
- 1tbsp sugar
For the cucumber buttercream
- 30g cucumber (use skin, but not seeds in centre)
- Small amount of green food colouring
For the orange buttercream
- Juice ½ an orange
- Rind ¼ an orange
- Small amount of orange food colouring
For the mint buttercream
- 8 fresh mint leaves
- Small amount of green food colouring
Instructions
- Make the cupcakes as per the instructions on the basic cupcake recipe, adding in the Pimm’s at the end of stage 3.
- Divide up the butter and icing sugar into 4 (100g icing sugar, 62g butter) and put in 4 separate bowls. Mix each until light in colour and fluffy. I recommend using a hand mixer (it saves on arm ache!)
- Strawberry buttercream: Make the strawberry flavouring by roughly chopping the strawberries and putting in a pan with the sugar over a medium heat stirring often. Once softened, mash gently with the back of a spoon and leave to soften a little more (about 2 minutes). Pass the mixture through a sieve to remove seeds. Leave the mixture to cool, then mix into one portion of the buttercream.
- Cucumber buttercream: Very finely chop cucumber and mix into one portion of the buttercream. Add a small amount of green food colouring, but keep it quite pale (the mint buttercream should be a stronger green).
- Orange buttercream: Blend in juice and rind into one portion of the buttercream, then add a small amount of orange food colouring to give a gentle hint of orange to it.
- Mint buttercream: Very finely chop mint and add to buttercream, then add a small amount of green food colouring, making sure the green is slightly stronger than that of the cucumber version.
- Piping: I used a piping bag and a large open star piping nozzle to pipe. I put the nozzle in the bag, then placed it in a tall glass, spreading the top of the bag over the top of the glass. You’ll need to put all the buttercream in at once, otherwise all the colours will get mixed up.
- Using a tablespoon, take a scoop of a one of the buttercream and gently push it to one side of the piping bag. Take another tablespoon and repeat with the next buttercream and so on and so forth. Once you’ve done one “layer” you can repeat again with the four colours – you don’t need to make sure each buttercream goes on the same side as the one before.
- Pull the bag upright and knock out any air in the bag then twist it at the top to close it. Make your swirls, they’ll come out all tie dye! If you need help with swirls try this basic cupcake swirl tutorial.
- If you want to add “lemonade” to your Pimm’s cupcakes, garnish with a ¼ slice of lemon.
10 Responses to “Pimm’s No.1 Cup-cakes”
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Your comment about “virgin” cupcakes is quite wrong! It’s a commonly held belief that when boiling alcohol it all quickly evaporates, however look at this website which gives an idea of how much alcohol remains (I have seen another one recently which is more authoritative but I can’t find it right now):
http://www.islamtomorrow.com/alcohol_cooked.asp
Wow, these look amazing and summery! Quite dedicated making 4 flavours of buttercream!
Wow this is buttercream heaven!!! so cute and inspiring!
You have a lovely blog and good food posts! Beware of artificial food colouring though: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/06/24/12-food-additives-to-avoid.aspx
Oh my. Those cakes look so adorable – the icing especially looks so delicate and you’ve achieved such pretty pastel colours. They look perfect for summer! Hannah x
p.s. your new flower-y backdrop looks lovely too.
[...] has given LayTheTable a gorgeous redesign, and with it, has posted this awesome recipe for Pimms No 1 Cupcakes. Mmm. All that [...]
I’m a Pimm’s addicted since my last visit to London, I’ve just ordered a bottle of it to celebrate my birthday through internet, just dicovered you blog and deeply in love with both of them, the blog and cupcakes!!
Hi, I have just made these but the orange buttercream curdled when I added the juice – not sure what I did wrong as I followed the receipe. Will have to pipe less icing and add a slice of orange instead.
Your website is very insipiring though – will be working my way through the cupcake reipes!
Was very excited to make these for the jubilee weekend however I’m left feeling rather disappointed. The cakes had no flavour of pimms at all and the buttercreams were so sloppy & slid right off my cakes. A real let down, sorry.
Hi Lauren, sorry to hear it didn’t work out – if the buttercream seemed too sloppy when you mixed them then you should add a little icing sugar. They have to be fairly stiff. Sometimes hot hands can melt the butter and make them sloppy. This happens.
The cakes themselves don’t really taste of Pimms, that much is true but it’s the buttercream that really gives them the Pimms feel.