Mojito Mini Cupcakes

With only four recipes for mini cupcakes in the cook book, I have been holding off of making one for a while. They are also all alcoholic cupcakes, mainly cocktail flavours and I am not a big fan (I seem to be saying that a lot at the moment) Went for the mojito ones first as this was one of my friend's favourites so seemed like as good a place as ever to start.

Whacking the oven on to pre-heat I set about in chopping the fresh mint and grating the lemon and lime zest that is added to the usual sponge batter. Then made up the rum mixtures on the hob. It is literally just white rum and caster sugar reduced down to half. I made this up, then set it aside as the recipe states, and made up the sponge part.

It wasn't until reading down the page that I realised the reduced rum doesn't get added to the batter but is spooned on top as soon as the cupcakes have come out of the oven, rather like a soaking syrup. Luck I read that when I did as I almost added it to the milk mixture by mistake. Even though I avoided that mishap, When I looked back into the saucepan, I realised the mixture was not liquid any more but has set. I tried to warm it back over the hob but it didn't work and so into the bin it went. Another batch went on whilst the sponge mixture was spooned into the teeny tiny cases. After telling Hubby about the first disaster we came up with the idea to let the mixture stay on the warm hob, with the heat off, to try and stop it from solidifying.

Cupcakes into the oven and set about wiping down the kitchen when thought I could smell something odd. A glance across the kitchen revealed that the second batch of reduced rum had also failed. Leaving it on the off but still warm hob meant that it stayed as a liquid but it also get brown and burnt. Took me a little while to get it off the bottle of the pan as set quickly once taken away from the heat. After this nightmare and questioning as to why it wasn't turning out right when the cook book says to make it up first, before anything else, I held off on making another lot up until the cakes had finished baking.

Waiting for the timer to go off, pondering the rum dilemma and reading the rest of the recipe through, a thought hit me..I am leaving the rum and sugar to boil too long and it is becoming a syrup which the cook book doesn't say anything about, just to let it reduce by half. Once the cupcakes had come out of the oven I put the third, and hopefully, final batch on and took it off once the liquid had started to reduce but wasn't thickening. This seemed to be the trick and it came out perfectly and was dribbled over the cupcake tops whilst they cooled.

The icing is the usual suspects of sugar and butter but with lemon and lime zest added into this mixture and then a small amount of rum added into an equal amount of milk. Whisk all this together and swirl onto the cupcakes, then I decorated with the suggested caster sugar and fresh chopped mint. They looked fab, not quite exactly like the photo as I only made 24 and they mushroomed over the top of the tin and cases a little so another tin is in order, think could have gotten a couple more out of that mix.

Packed 6 up and took them over to the friend who was eagerly awaiting our arrival. They dove in immediately and said they were fab. It took until 2 days later for me to actually taste one and they were yummy. The sponge with the lemon, lime and mint inside it was amazing and the top/icing wasn't as strong a taste with the rum as I was expecting but it does have an after taste of cocktail. I think there was a little bit too much caster sugar sprinkled on the top as this was the overwhelming flavour I got from the first bite. Even so, they are lovely and being so small you could easily eat quite a few..as to whether they taste like a mojito, the jury is out on that verdict, having never actually drunk a mojito in my life so far.