Friday, June 20, 2008

June Cupcake Hero - A Taste of Melon



Cupcake Hero for June is hosted by April of Abby Sweets. The theme is melon. This is one of the difficulties in participating in Northern Hemisphere lead challenges – melon sings of summer. It is the middle of winter here!!!! Plus if I am perfectly honest, I don’t like melon. I particularly don’t like watermelon. I just don’t get what there is to like. It’s kind of bland if you ask me!

But, could I give up a cupcake challenge? No! I looked through a number of books for inspiration and the one that was the most inspiring was a melon, mint, honey and yoghurt smoothie in a Peter Gordon cookbook. So, I made these cupcakes – melon and yoghurt honey mint cupcakes!!! A bit of a mouthful, but very yummy even if you are not a huge fan of melon.



The cake component is honey and yoghurt cake. I used a very simple melt and mix method, as the honey I had bought from my local farmers market was a bit firmer than I would have liked. The cake by itself has a lovely strong honey flavour and would be nice by itself with a cup of tea (I don’t like tea either, but I am imagining!). I quite like the idea of fillings for cupcakes, so I made a filling using the melon and mint part of my smoothie inspiration. I diced half a honey dew melon, combined it with some sugar and heated it in the microwave and then added gelatine to get a firmer consistency. I added sliced fresh mint to the filling.



I wanted a nice swirly topping for the top of my cupcakes, so used my favourite cream cheese icing. It is actually tinted the same colour as the melon (a pale orange) but the photos are not showing the true colour.



Melon Yoghurt Honey Mint Cakes

Cake

155g butter
½ c honey
3 eggs
¾ c natural yoghurt
1 ¾ c self raising flour
¾ c sugar

· Melt honey and butter together and then whisk in eggs one at a time. Whisk in yoghurt
· Stir in sugar and flour until just combined.
· Spoon into cupcake cases (I got 17) and bake at 180c for 18 minutes or until cooked through
· When cold scoop some cake out and fill with filling, popping the cake lid back on
· Ice with cream cheese icing

Filling

½ honeydew melon, diced
½ c sugar
2 tsp gelatine
¼ c mint leaves, shredded

· Combine melon and sugar and microwave for 3 minutes, stirring after each minute
· Sprinkle gelatine over top and microwave for 20 seconds. Stir well and leave to cool
Once cool, stir through the mint

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Those look delicious! Your frosting looks so pretty. You are definitely dedicated to be making these when you don't care for melon all that much and when they're out of season! Great job :)

CB said...

I am not a fan of melon either but these cupcakes look downright tasty! Great job!
/Clara

Cakelaw said...

Honey, yoghurt and mint - who could resist? The honeydew icing with the silver balls looks so elegant.

Cakelaw said...

Hi Tammy, you have an award:

http://kitchenlaw.blogspot.com/2008/06/sugar-high-friday-taste-of-canada-oat.html

Lysy said...

What an inspired take on the Cupcake Hero theme! Partnering the melon with the honey sounds like a really good combination. I hope that your tasters thought the same!

steph- whisk/spoon said...

good one!! i copped out on this month's CH, telling myself that we are moving to a new flat and i should be concentrating on packing. but the real reason is that i couldn't come up with anything good for melon!

Sophie said...

That sounds like a delicious combination :). Great job. The frosting looks beautiful!