Frozen cherry-berry cupcakes for Luke

Rightio folks, I know a lot of people have been getting their A level results lately. And I know this year is, like such a drag because bad grades now means big debts later, right? Bigger than now, I mean, which is still pretty big. 
But I digress because right now, I couldn't care less about people I don't know going to University this year and escaping the Big Bad £9000-a-year debt Wolf. I care about my lovely, talented, little brother. His name is Luke and he's still a whole year of school and exams off University, meaning that wolf is probably going to get him.

Yesterday was so definitely not about future worries and penny-pinching though, because yesterday he got his AS results, and they were goooood. Like, AAAA good. Clever boy. I doubt this is the last you'll hear about my multitalented little brother, I mean he can sing, dance AND score 100% in a politics module (the description of which makes my brain go sleepy). If I didn't love him so much I'd probably be fighting a wicked case of green-eyed monster. 

So, big grins on faces, me and his other doting sis, Amy (the rather fetching Blackberry Horse) set about making tasty cake. Nom nom nom. 

These are a topless (tee hee) incarnation of the 'strawberry cheesecake cupcake' from the Hummingbird Bakery Book. I've had issues with basically every recipe I've used from there, so I can't really recommend it, but I was confident that with some sibling tag team wizardry, nothing could go wrong!

Frozen Cherry-berry Cupcakes (a loose and free adaptation from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook by Tarek Malouf) 

1. Dig out some berries. The recipe wanted fresh strawberries, we had a raspberry and stoned cherry mix from the depths of the freezer, we won. Put a healthy layer of frozen goodness ino each cupcake case. Preheat to 180 celsuis while you're there. 2. Cream 140g sugar, 40g butter til Kingdom come. 3. Add 120ml milk, an egg and some vanilla. Amy dug out some simply ah-(wait for it!) MAZE-ing vanilla syrup, but I'd have used plain ol' extract and stir in. 4. Add 120g plain flour, a teaspoon of baking powder and mix to combine. The recipe wanted all the flour in at the start, but I fear the gluten. It has powers, you know, and it's best not to let it get too strong. 5. The mixture is very wet here, so employ your best hand-eye coordination powers to get it into the cases. Fill to about two thirds full.  The ratio of fruit to mix was about 50:50. Alternatively, get someone else to do it while you phtograph.  

6. Bake for about 20 mins, then give them an eyeing and turn as needed to give the chilly ones at the front some oven-loving. 

 

"What to do when you run out of mix", asks the Blackberry Horse. (Ignore the attractive, though perplexed lady in the photo up top, it is in fact a horse. A blackberry one, in fact. The pretty lady is but a trick of the light)...
...Easy! Eat the delicious, red-jewel berries right from the case. Conundrum solved!

These end up looking more like a friand than a lovely, round topped cupcake. 
This may or may not be due to the cold berries affecting the bake, the baking powder (it might be a little old), or the fact we barely followed the recipe at all. They taste (and smell) good though, so who's complaining. 
Finally, no cream cheese frosting. There's a good reason I dropped the strawberry cheesecake cupcake title. The first, no strawbs, the second, no cheesecake icing. I did say the adaptation was 'loose and free'.
The cake is dense and springy, with lots of fruit juice soaked in. This is what breakfast looks like for the next few days. Coincedentally, it is also what mid-morning snack looks like. Even more coincedentally, afternoon snacks are looking pretty cherry-berry flavoured too.