ANZAC Day Baking – Two-Up Cupcakes

Yesterday at work we held a baking day in honour of ANZAC Day.  Members of our workplace “Baking Club” brought in baked goods and the deal was anyone could eat whatever they wanted in exchange for a gold coin donation.  The money we raised we donated to Legacy.

I wanted to make something delicious with an ANZAC twist.

So I created Two-Up Cupcakes!

Basically you could make these with any kind of cupcake you like.  The “Two-Up” part comes from the decoration on top – two chocolate coins per cupcake to represent the coins used in Two-Up.  For any non-Aussies who don’t have any idea what Two-Up means or why I’m decorating cupcakes with chocolate coins, Two-Up is a gambling game illegal every day of the year except ANZAC Day.  When doing a quick Google search to make sure I had my facts right for this post, I came across the Gambling (Two-Up) Act. That’s right, there’s actually a whole piece of legislation dedicated to this game.  Perhaps it’s just the law graduate in me, but I found that really interesting!

Anyway, the game is played with coins flipped by a “spinner” and participants bet on how the coins are going to land.  It was played extensively during World War 1, and hence why it’s an ANZAC tradition in Australia.

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So for these cupcakes, I decided to try a Belinda Jeffery recipe from her book ‘Mix & Bake‘.  My mum has been having a lot of luck baking cakes out of this book recently so I thought I’d give it a go.  The recipe I chose was her ‘Tropical Pineapple Crush Cake’ which I interpret to be a tropical version of a Hummingbird Cake (thanks to the addition of macadamia nuts instead of pecans).  I adapted it slightly, making only 1 half of the recipe, adding extra ingredients and turning it into cupcakes.  My adaptation of the recipe made 22 small-ish cupcakes. I also renamed my version “Tropical Hummingbird Cake” (mainly because I really love the name “Hummingbird Cake”)

Here’s what I did:

Tropical Hummingbird Cake

Ingredients

1 and 1/2 cups plain flour
1 cup caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda
1/2 heaped teaspoon ground cinnamon
A little bit less than 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup roasted macadamia nuts, chopped roughly
1/4 cup toasted coconut
2 eggs
3/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup crushed pineapple, undrained
3 overripe bananas, mashed

Method

This cake was actually super easy to make.  All you need to do (after preheating your oven to 160 degrees Celcius and lining your cupcake tins) is whisk together the flour, sugar, salt, bicarb soda, cinnamon and nutmeg in a large bowl.  Then add in your macadamias and toasted coconut and stir them through.

In another bowl beat the eggs lightly and then whisk in the oil and vanilla.  Then mix in your pineapple and mashed banana.

Next, all you have to do is mix your wet mixture into your dry mixture and stir until it’s all combined.

Voila! That easy.

Use a couple of tablespoons to put your mixture into your cupcake tins.  I usually fill mine until it’s about half a centimetre from the top of the cupcake case.

Cook in your 160 degree oven for roughly 20-25 minutes.  It’ll really depend on the size of your cupcakes.  Keep an eye on them and when they are look like they are close, test them with a cake skewer (it should come out clean) and by pressing your finger lightly on the top (the cake should spring back up).

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I then iced mine with Cream Cheese Frosting which involved whipping 65grams of butter with 125g of cream cheese, 1 teaspoon of vanilla and 250 grams of icing sugar until the mixture was smooth.  Sadly, my icing erred on disastrous, for one reason or another. I’m not sure if my kitchen was too hot or I overworked the mixture (which has never happened to me before with icing) but my icing was a runny mess and took a bit of salvaging.  In the end, it all came together and these cupcakes made a scrumptious treat for morning tea.

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Would I make them again? Definitely.

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Category : Baking
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