Last year I made virtually the same cupcakes but I fancied a change and at the moment have a penchant for all things almond…can’t get enough of it. Also I have found that with Doves gluten free flour you can do more or less everything gluten free and it makes absolutely no difference to the recipes. A bonus for me, because it means I am only making one item and a huge bonus for my son who doesn’t miss out if I am too lazy to make a gluten free version of a recipe.

So, in honour of family visiting, the glut of apples slowly rotting because I haven’t had time to do anything with them, and just because I fancied a cake I decided to try making an almond version of my apple cupcakes.

Ingredients

• 125g soft unsalted butter
• 125g caster sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 100g self raising flour ( gluten free if required)
• 25g ground almonds
• 1/2 teaspoon of almond extract
• 1 teaspoon gluten free baking powder
• 2-3 tablespoons of milk
• 3 small eating apples, peeled, cored and cut into small chunks
• icing to decorate

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200 •C / gas mark 6
2. I do this the easy way but you are welcome to make the cakes the traditional way. Put all the ingredients except the milk and apples into a food processor and process until smooth.
3. Add the milk slowly and mix until a dropping consistency. Tip: it helps if all the ingredients are at room temperature
4. Put a teaspoon of the mixture into the cupcake cases
5. top the mixture with half a teaspoon of apple chunks
6. Finish off by adding a generous dollop of mixture on top of the apple chunks
7. Bake in the oven for approximately 15 minutes or until firm on top
8. Leave to cool on a rack
9. Decorate with glace icing, buttercream or just a sprinkling of icing sugar.
10. They make perfect cupcakes to put into a lunch box because of their firmness

Food has been the forefront of my mind this week, nothing different there then but I was lucky enough to attend the tech n taste conference in London especially for people that blog about or love food! It was lovely to try various different products but I wanted to share with you my highlights.  I loved the photo session because it reminded me that not all food photos have to be perfect and in fact they can be taken with any device including a camera on a phone and then edited very easily on that same device to produce photos like these of cakes from The Hummingbird Bakery which incidentally I notice now do gluten free cupcakes and special occasion cakes. I was thrilled to see this on their website, shame they don’t have any premises outside of London though. So indulge me..as you can see I’ve been playing around a bit with my iPhone this week.

My son’s eyes lit up when I came home with this little box! Yes I carried it all the way home and the closest I came to it was a sniff. Although I have to admit that I did try a small sample of their jam doughnut cupcake… yum