Raspberry cupcakes

Recently, I was invited to a birthday party and tasted some of the most delicious cupcakes I’ve ever had! I’m normally a) not a big fan of desserts (except if they’re Asian of course ;-) ) and b) don’t like cupcakes that much because they’re just so heavy. But somehow, the version prepared that evening was very convincing and so I am sharing the recipe (which I adapted ever so slightly) with you. I hope I can convince some of you cupcake-doubters too and for those of you who are cupcake-lovers anyway, I hope this one is an addition to your favourites!

Ingredients (for a batch of about 20 big cupcakes or 25-30 smaller ones):

For the dough:

200 g sugar

125 g butter

2 eggs

1 vanilla pod

150 ml sour cream

180 g flour

1 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. salt

1 basket of raspberries

For the topping:

200 g Philadelphia cream cheese

125 g butter

500 g icing sugar

1 vanilla pod

Preparation:

Mix the (melted) butter, sugar and eggs in a bowl. Cut the vanilla pod in half and scratch out the seeds with a knife; add to the paste. Mix the flour, baking powder and salt and sieve into the butter mix. Add the sour cream in between portions of flour. Put 2-3 raspberries in each cupcake form and add the mix with a spoon. Bake at 180°C for 20 minutes. In the meantime, mix the butter (at room temperature), Philadelphia and the vanilla seeds (scratched out of the pod) in another bowl. Sieve in the icing sugar and stir until it is creamy. Add a handful of raspberries and mix well.

Once the cupcakes are done and cooled, decorate with the topping.