Vanilla bean cupcakes with speculoos-mascarpone frosting
I will forever love cupcakes
Published originally on my blog on 10 February 2015
If you follow me on instagram you may have seen that Saturday was baking day; in the morning it was cupcakes and in the afternoon bread. Being tucked away in my little kitchen making sweet and savory things on the weekends makes me happy.
I made a bread loaf entirely with buckwheat flour for the first time ever, and it was a good start. It was dense, due to the lack of gluten in the flour, a bit crumbly, but held together very well, and we ate it mostly with some strong aged Gouda and fig jam. The recipe needs some tweaking so I’m not going to post it just yet, but what was a complete success was these cupcakes.
Saturday was not the first time I made these; they are my go-to cupcakes whenever there is a craving for speculoos biscuit paste, which doesn’t happen often, admittedly, but when it does, these cupcakes are the thing to make. I don’t enjoy speculoos paste on its own or on pancakes/bread etc. as I find it a bit too sweet, but incorporated in a mascarpone frosting for cupcakes, it is alarmingly good.
When I was in Belgium recently, I bought a speculoos paste whose flavor I really enjoy over those I find in the Netherlands, and Saturday was my chance to use it. Vanilla cupcakes are the best vessel to carry the flavor of the frosting, making an excellent combination, and I also had some speculoos cookies on hand, which I crumbled and sprinkled on top to accentuate that biscuit flavor.
The cupcake is fluffy and intensely aromatic from the fresh vanilla seeds whereas the frosting is creamy and airy with that spicy speculoos biscuit flavor. Overall, the flavors are not overly sweet, which is always a good thing when it comes to cupcakes in my book.
Give them a try! And if you can’t find speculoos where you live, how about substituting the biscuit paste for gianduia? Different flavor of course, but oh so incredibly good.
That’s what I did yesterday when I made another batch of these cupcakes.
Vanilla bean cupcakes with speculoos-mascarpone frosting
Speculoos paste is a paste made from the classic Belgian speculoos biscuits (similar to Dutch speculaas). Not all speculoos pastes are the same, so make sure to use one whose flavor you really like. Oh, and if you can’t find speculoos paste or gianduia (as mentioned above), then use nutella or another hazelnut-chocolate paste of your liking.
