Strawberry Ripple Cupcakes

I never use to be so into cooking, in fact when I first left home I bought a student cookbook (I had already graduated by then), taught myself to make a chilli con carne and a chicken risotto and just ate those two, every week.

Then I met Jo, who is a keen baker and got me into baking.  I bought my first ever cupcake cookbook and that was it, I baked cupcakes for a while, then I became interested in cooking more savoury dishes. When I became vegetarian, and then vegan, that's when my love of cooking really started to take off.

One of the first cupcakes I ever made out of the above cupcake book was a raspberry ripple cupcake- which was a plain vanilla cupcake with raspberry jam swirled through the sponge.

For today's Monday Bake I decided to create a vegan version, however I decided to substitute strawberry jam, because it's what I had in.

For the sponge I used the vanilla cupcake recipe from the Ms Cupcake book, however any regular vegan vanilla cupcake recipe would work.

Spoon the cake batter in the cupcake cases and put about 1/4 teaspoon of strawberry jam on the top of each cupcake. Then using a skewer/spoon/whatever, mix the jam into the cake mix, trying to mix it in a spiral motion.

Bake as instructed.  The picture below is mine after baking, you can see the jam dotted about on the surface of some of the cakes. I always end up with some of the batter missing the cases!

Once cooled, then it's time to decorate. I decided to go for a simple glaze- I mixed 60g of icing sugar with a 'dash' (I used the cap of the top of vanilla extract to measure) of vanilla extract and gradually poured in almond milk (or whatever you have in) I used the cap off the milk to gradually add it bit by bit. Between adding each bit of milk, give it a good stir- it's easy to add too much and end up with runny icing. Add enough milk so that the icing sugar dissolves in, but it isn't too runny- if you add too much milk, add a little more icing sugar so that you get the right consistency.

When happy, spoon the glaze onto the cakes.  I decorated mine with some strawberry heart sweets I got from Home Bargains.