Some Lovely Strawberry Cupcakes (and not a cow in sight!)

After my boyfriends mum fell in love with the Caramel Mud cupcakes I made last week, I decided I'd make a whole batch to take round for after our roast dinner on Saturday (I know, roast dinner belongs on Sunday...long story!) We go round most weeks for a roast, along with my boyfriends brother and his fiance. She is allergic to dairy however, and therefor would've been left out of the cupcake fun, so I decided to do the whole lot dairy free. Divine Cupcakes (see post below for link) had just one dairy free recipe, Strawberry Cupcakes, but it looked good so I decided to try it out. 


Now, I was taught how to make a cake by my Nanny, who was incredibly particular about beating the butter and sugar together first with a WOODEN spoon (always wooden - no idea why!), then beating in the eggs, a little at a time, then using a METAL spoon to carefully fold in the flour. She is suitably horrified at the idea of using an electric whisk to make a cake, but (after a little apprehension) I have been doing so for a while. However, I still use the same principle of butter and sugar, then eggs then flour. This recipe however calls for everything (including the soya spread in place of the butter, I used 'Pure') to be put in a big bowl, and mixed together on high for 5 minutes. I fell in and followed orders, and sure enough a recognisable cake batter quickly surfaced. I then mixed in some chopped fresh strawberries, and baked as instructed. 


The resulting cakes smelled gorgeous, and tasted good too, but the texture was a little weird, quite heavy and bit sunken, I'm not sure if this was down to the soy spread, the 'all at once' method, or that I opened the oven door. Once iced with a tower of buttercream however (200g Soya Spread and 600g Icing Sugar) they tasted lovely, and you certainly wouldn't guess they were dairy free. 


Ever the perfectionist though, I am determined to make them better, lighter and with chocolate! We shall see, my Nanny's 69th birthday cake is next in line for the oven, so it might be next week before I have another foray into the world of Soya!