Several weeks ago, a very good friend said that she had lots of recipes that had been given to her in just this way and that she would e-mail one or two on. Her first offering raised an eyebrow in our house as it was a cupcake recipe calling for a tin of tomato soup. Not, I think you will agree, a conventional cupcake ingredient. She had warned me she thought it was form the 70s and probably American.
It has taken a few weeks to pluck up the courage to try the recipe out, but what better excuse than a very wet weekend to give it a go?
The recipe starts conventionally enough with creamed butter and sugar and then the addition of eggs but then the flour and soup go in turning the mixture a slightly off putting orangey colour rather than the vibrant orangey red I was expecting.
Not one to be deterred, into the oven they went. What came out was a bit of a disappointment. I have never managed to produce lopsided cakes before. Sunken, yes. Exploded, yes. But lopsided? No.
But how did they taste? Well not bad. They were not as sweet as normal cupcakes and had a texture that looked and felt similar to a malt-loaf just slightly dryer. An almost rubbery spongey texture but not at all unpleasant. You could almost compare them to a cornbread in terms of sweet/savoury or even a bland savoury muffin. However, they are definitely the ugly sister of the cupcake world and I am not sure I would make them again other than for the novelty factor of telling people what went into them.
