Mandarin cupcakes

Makes 8-12 depending on size

Ingredients

125g butter, softened (the softened butter should be easy to cut through)

1/3 cup of sugar (70g)

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 large eggs at room temperature

1 cup of spelt or gluten free flour

175ml mandarin juice- zest them first if you can using a micro plane-for me this was 4 mandarins- plus you need 1 extra mandarin (squeezed) for the icing

Method

Preheat oven to 180 C

In a medium bowl with a hand beater, cream butter, vanilla and sugar until light and fluffy. Then one at a time your eggs. Continue beating until eggs are incorporated. Sift your flour, and baking powder into the butter mix, then zest and juice and fold into until combined, make sure there are no lumps, but don’t overmix. Spoon into 8- 12 holed greased or lined muffin tin and bake for 12-15 minutes. I use a silicone one then they just pop out.

Leave in tin to cool for 5 minutes and then turn out and leave to cool completely on a cake rack. Ice with your favourite icing when cool.

I used the juice of one mandarin with about ¼ cup or so of icing sugar and a heaped tsp of soft butter until you get a reasonably thick icing. Feel free to color with food coloring to make it orange- 2 drops yellow and 1 drop red. Sprinkles optional!

If you don’t want to ice you could add in some chocolate chips into the batter or on top for Jaffa cupcakes. You could swap mandarin for orange, lemon or lime.