Marshmallow cupcakes...

So, for Christmas, I got the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook. The photos are totally gorgeous, so of course we had to have a try. Olivia wanted to do the Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes, but as they require fresh strawberries, we decided to wait until we have a better chance of getting some reasonable strawberries. Instead, we tried out the marshmallow cupcakes - a vanilla cupcake, with marshmallow filling and vanilla icing with marshmallows in it.



Verdict: the cupcakes themselves were gorgeously tasty & moist. So the vanilla cupcake recipe is a keeper. The frosting is nice, but we think there are a few too many marshmallows in it - admittedly, the recipe uses mini marshmallows, which we didn't have, so we cut some bigger ones into pieces, but I'm not sure that makes any difference. We liked the combination of marshmallow and frosting, just felt the balance was a little off. The marshmallow filling, on the other hand, didn't work at all - the marshmallows were a royal pain to melt and then very hard to fill into the cupcakes. This may have to do with the type of marshmallows used, of course. I think the idea is nice, but I probably wouldn't do the filling aspect again unless I managed to get ahold of a jar of marshmallow fluff (not a common product in the UK). Oh, and they do look really fabulous, which is definitely worth something!