[butterflies & dessert]

I'm getting back into the groove of home baking for school lunches ... and made the cutest butterfly cupcakes today ... and as an added bonus, they're sugar free! I used Xylitol in the recipe instead of sugar, and dusted the top with Stevia (Stevia was also used to sweeten the whipped cream). I can't say the whipped cream is super healthy, but it's a teaspoon's worth, so not too much, and it's oh so delish, and so light and fluffy.

I used my favourite Patty Cake recipe from my Grade 9 cookbook, Everyday Cookery (by Helen Bunney) ... I keep going back to this resource ... just back-to-basics cooking, it's great, no frills, just practical recipes with ordinary ingredients. As a personal triumph, I think I've finally found the technique to get these little beauties so they work every time ... a food processor to mix everything together! I don't know what is different to using my electric beaters, but it just seems to turn out so light and fluffy using the food processor. Maybe I've just had dodgy beaters all this time? Who knew? I thought it was the oven that was too hot/not hot enough that made my previous attempts little lumps of lead. Apparently not.

An accidental dessert...

I had some ripe bananas in the fruit bowl, so was contemplating making banana cake to use these up. I also had some mangoes (from the tree in our backyard) that were starting to get almost past their use by date, and thought, 'I wonder if I swapped mango for the banana would it work?' Feeling brave after the cupcakes turned out so well, I decided to bite the bullet and give it a go.

My mango cake turned out quite dense, and I sandwiched it with a whipped cream filling ... which looked pretty, but was a bit too strong (flavour-wise) on it's own. I was a little disappointed, and thought I'd serve it up as dessert with a scoop of vanilla ice cream - it was just what was needed to balance out the stronger taste of the pudding/cake. Winner! And there are 10 more servings in a container in the freezer for us to enjoy periodically over the coming weeks. Happy days.