Yummy apocalyptic craters

message for Christmas of 2009 :

I decided to make the dessert for Christmas this year and wanted to offer festive cupcakes with a taste of winter. Rummaging through my recipes and all websites, I came across one by Lisa who proposed, among her dozens of incredible dishes, "the one said to be the preferred cake of Queen Elizabeth. And although it was never proved, this unusual detail began to turn the "yum-yum" machine in my head and I wanted to know if it could be true.

This cake is almost a fondant where dates replace chocolate. Nuts complement the soft texture with a bit of crunch and sugar in fairly good quantity offers a pretty soft and caramelized crown. As I wanted to make individual cakes, I adjusted the cooking time. Perhaps it was this change of mould that has led to the dough explosion (but luckily I had added strips of parchment paper on the edges)… At first annoyed, I waited them to cool before taking off the paper, and then I was surprised that the dough had caramelised into a very thin blanket that created sexy a red lace.

You can imagine my surprise when I took the batch on the table, and when I realised that what I thought was a dessert rather frightening to see turned out to be the favorite of many guests!

Ingredients for thirty cupcakes :

25cl water

20 beautiful dates cut into thin pieces

1 teaspoon baking soda

200g sugar

90g brown sugar

60g butter

1 egg

1 / 2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

180g flour

75g chopped walnuts

+ Icing sugar for dusting

Boil water in a saucepan and pour in the chopped dates. Simmer over low heat for twenty minutes until it forms a stew. Once cooked, remove from heat and sprinkle over the baking soda. Mix.

Preheat oven to 180 ° C.

In a bowl, pour the sugar and softened butter and whisk until the mixture has a creamy consistency. Then add the egg and a pinch of salt and whisk again. Sift together flour and baking powder and add gradually to the previous mixture. Pour all the nuts and finish mixing with a spatula.

Prepare boxes for cupcakes (or your moulds) on a plate. To prevent them from overflowing, I added strips of parchment paper that I then stapled around the boxes. It's a bit tedious, but it's worth it for the final result. With a spoon, pour the batter until 3 / 4 of the mould. Bake for 20 minutes, no more. The cooking of these cupcakes was more than surprising. The mutation from the cupcakes to apocalyptic craters occurs in less than a minute. According to the result you want to get, I advise you to observe from the 15th minute.

Detail from Jen Stark's paper sculpture, see her works here.