A Little Sweetener – Strawberry and Cherry Cupcakes

There is a great deal in the press and on social media about the evils of sugar – and I agree! Drinking cans of soft drink with the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar, consuming large amounts of confectionary full of sugar and colouring and precious little else, or gorging on commercial cakes and biscuits that add trans fats to high sugar loadings is not doing any of us any good. And don’t get me started on hidden sugars in items like breakfast cereals, and sugars that go under other names like maltodextrin or corn syrup!

Having said this I am also strongly of the view that a little of something usually ain’t going to kill you and may in fact be good for the body and the spirit – everything in moderation – and homemade sweet treats that have real ingredients like butter and eggs and fruit, and that share the ten teaspoons of sugar amongst of group of people who are enjoying each others company are part of a life well lived!

The other night we were hosting a committee meeting where most were coming straight from work, some from a day spent outdoors and I wanted something to start the evening along with a hot drink. The fridge yielded the end of a punnet of strawberries and bottled cherries left over from making pineapple upside down cake last weekend so strawberry and cherry cupcakes were the upshot.

If I am tossing something like this together I tend to default to a fairly standard cake batter – the one I used for the pineapple upside down cake! So if you are interested head on over and get the details there. The same quantities that made the cake will make 12 cupcakes. The recipe refers to using the juice from the tinned pineapple – I still had some left in the fridge so used that but I could equally have used straight milk – or almond milk.

Once the cake batter was made I added about a cup of hulled, washed and diced strawberries and stirred them in to the mix. I lined a muffin tray with patty cake liners and divided the mixture amongst them, being sparing to start with – they need to be about half filled as they will rise as they cook – once all twelve have filling you can go back an distribute the remainder to those that might look a little light on. I popped a cherry on the top of each and put the tray in a 200°C oven for six minutes then turned it around for another six. Once cooked the cake will spring back to the touch and should be golden but not over brown. If necessary give it another couple of minutes. If you are worried as to whether the mixture is cooked test it with a skewer that should come out clean. The cherries tend to disappear sinking into the mix and forming a hidden taste bomb!

Once cooked remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack – if you haven’t got one the grill tray in most ovens works well. You have to keep an eye on these guys as they tend to sprout legs and walk off with passing sons, daughters and other interested parties – muffled yelps will expose culprits sneaking hot cake when they bite into the cherry! These can be served warm with cream or ice cream or just as is but are also good cold and can make their way into a lunch box if they survive that long! For us they were a plate of sweet treats to start the brains working – food on our committee meeting table – less the couple that got away!

Enjoy!

While these were strawberry and cherry they could equally, and often have been, apple or blueberry, raspberry, orange … the principle stays the same – depends on what the fridge and the fruit bowl offer up as generally this sort of baking is unplanned in our household, happening as the spirit moves me! Please do share your experiences if you experiment …

 

Food on the Table Tasmania!

Over the last few weeks I have found myself in a number of conversations, reading articles and watching videos that have common themes, and themes important to me. It is all about food! Another food blog I hear you think to yourself. Food is fashionable and everyone has a food blog, follows one, watches cooking programs, collects recipe books, knows the coolest places to eat, is up on the latest super foods, is low carb, vegan, paleo, primal …

Despite all this hype and interest our health as a state in Tasmania, where I live, is woeful! We are blessed with clean air and water, good rainfall, and a temperate climate and we produce some of the greatest food in the world; recently we entertained the world’s leading chefs and foodies to dinner at MONA (the Museum of Old and New Art) to showcase Australian food. Yet most Tasmanians eat far less than the recommended minimum of two serves of fruit and five of vegetables a day and we have alarming rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes and other diet related health issues. And we are not alone in this. Much of the western world has similar issues and the same trends are emerging in other nations as they industrialise their food.

None of this is new and it hasn’t happened overnight although, in terms of our ‘bigger picture’ life on earth, many of the issues we face are relatively recent, escalating over the last fifty years. There are plenty of switched on people who are trying to make a difference and ‘banging on’ about the need for more fresh fruit and vegetables and less processed food in our diets but we do not appear to be having the desired effect! Why not?

That is what I want to think about and explore in this blog. I am not arrogant enough to expect to change the world but my hope is that I can inspire a few other people, fellow Tasmanians and some of you from farther afield to consider how we, as individuals, can make a difference and turn the tide here in Tasmania and elsewhere.

My first assertion, and derived from it the name of this blog, is that we need to put food back on the table! Preferably on plates not out of boxes, polystyrene cups, paper bags or the like. Real food that my great grandmother would recognise as food. And that we sit down and eat it together.

The photo is of a meal that I sat down to recently with a group of my extended family. We talked, laughed and ate together; we ate food that my daughter had prepared that included a big variety of vegetables, some cooked and some raw, together with meat, cheese, egg, bread and fruit. This is something that I believe we do not do enough of – eat together, eat well and eat real food!

I hope you will join me in in my challenge – to explore how we can make a difference. What are the obstacles, what are the issues, how can we help each other?