Clementine and Camomile Cupcakes

Since my cousin Marghe gave me this wonderful book Cupcakes, small luxuries for your palate, by Luxury Books, I can’t help! I keep on leafing through it, looking at it, admiring it, dreaming on its glossy pages, running my fingers over the vintage cover, gripping the book in my hands as it was a treasure!

Every recipe is so interesting, but there was recipe… it has been love at first sight: clementines! This year I’m really victim of a clementine addiction, I used them everywhere, from Jamie’s clementine curd to a salad with fennel, clementines and block olives…

Ingredients for 20 cakes:

• milk, 185 ml
• camomile flowers, 5 gr plus flowers to decorate cupcakes
• butter, 150 gr (maybe 120 are enough…) softened and diced
• caster sugar, 230 gr
• eggs, 3
• grated clementine peel, 2 tablespoons
• clementines, 300 gr – peeled and deseeded
• semolina flour, 60 gr
• self rising flour, 155 gr

Clementine icing:

• sifted icing sugar, 155 gr
• grated clementine peel, 1 teaspoon
• clementine juice, 2 – 3 tablespoons

Preheat oven to 180°C. Pour camomile flowers into milk and and bring it to the boil: let it simmer for 5 minutes then filter the milk. Peel and deseed clementines, removing the inner skin as weel if too thick. Add clementines, butter, sugar, eggs, clementine peel,flour and semolina flour and stir with and electric beater.

Spoon mixture into 20 moulds lined with cake cases and bake them for 8 – 10 minutes, until firm and dried. Let them cool on a wire rack.

Now, let’s make the icing. Add icing sugar, clementine peel and clementine juice into a metallic bowl, combine until they turn into a paste. Cook it in a bain marie over a pot with simmering water (don’t let the bowl touch the water) until it melts down. Sprinkle your cupcakes with the icing and decorate it with a camomile flower.

We loved them! Everyone loved them! They are firm and so scented with clementine aroma, besides that camomile enriches them with an unique hint. Clementine is a wintry fruit, but these cupcakes are so joyful and colorful that they seem the right link in between winter and spring.

Related posts:

Jamie Oliver’s Clementine Curd Citrus Jelly My olive oil and tangerine chocolate cake Chocolate and clementine olive oil cake. My cake