Soda Cupcakes

As I mentioned in my previous post, my recent afternoon tea did not consist just of Strawberry-Cream Cheese cupcakes (as good as they were).

There were also Soda Cupcakes.

Again, these are out of Betty Crocker's Big Book of Cupcakes. You can find the recipe for Orange Soda Cupcakes here, as part of a book preview on Google Books. I made half using orange soft drink and the other half using Vanilla Coke. Both tasted fine, but the orange worked better. The coke flavour was not very pronounced.

I think I'll keep trying other flavours. Lemonade might be good. Raspberry drink? Or Ribena even? I have already disgusted a few people by suggesting that I might try making Sarsaparilla cupcakes so I won't be offended if you think any of my other flavour ideas are awful. (Sars is not just for old people!)

Instead of just dusting with icing sugar I decided to up the fizz factor and use sherbet. This seems to work best if you mix it in with a little icing sugar, both to reduce the acidity (I was concerned someone would inhale deeply and choke on sherbet... but I'm probably just paranoid) and also because the sherbet seems to melt away and get oddly frothy if it warms up in the heat of the day.

There you have it. Fizz in a cake.

Chocolate Orange Mousse Cake (gluten & dairy free)

I hosted a gluten and dairy-free afternoon tea on the weekend and had fun trying a couple of new new recipes, which both came out really well. This is the first one - a really rich chocolate orange mousse cake from The gluten, wheat & dairy free cookbook by Nicola Graimes.

I used Nuttelex as my dairy-free butter substitute. It's lighter in colour than butter, but it actually tastes pretty good.

This is the cake base, all ready to bake, and already looking pretty appetising.


I used 70% dark Lindt chocolate to make the mousse. It felt a little wrong melting down such nice quality chocolate, but it's the most reliably dairy free chocolate I could source (that isn't just a gross chocolate substitute).


As I was separating my four eggs I was lamenting the fact that I would probably end up throwing the unused portion away. Then I read the recipe properly and found that I would actually be using both parts. Yay! Also, look how orange those yolks are.


Yet another orange ingredient - the rind of two oranges in fact.


Crazy things happen to eggs when you beat them for long enough. It's like magic. Here's before.


And after. Crazy.


After I'd mixed up the mousse and spread it across the cake base I put it in the fridge to set overnight. It probably didn't need that long, but that's how long it got. Here's the finished product, decorated with a sprinkling of extra orange rind.


The verdict from my husband was that this cake tasted like Jaffas. You wouldn't know it didn't have dairy or gluten in it if nobody told you. Unless you were very, very perceptive. What I mean to say is that it was really good.