Women's Weekly Turkish Delight Cupcakes

Rose scented cupcake is a nice addition to your conventional raya goodies and lovely for romantic weddings

If you are lost as to what to bake for raya, may I suggest instead of the conventional kuih raya, try baking some rose scented turkish delight cupcakes. Even as I speak, a lot of baking and cooking are underway in thousands of kitchens in Malaysia in conjunction with Hari Raya Aidilfitri. I love it that in a multi-racial country, we are blessed with the opportunity to celebrate and experience the diversity of different cultures. 

This recipe is from Women's Weekly Cupcakes. According to the front cover, the recipes have been triple tested for guaranteed result. This turkish delight recipe is the first recipe I tried from this book. 
 

All went well until the cupcakes were in the oven. They started overflowing and when I got the cupcakes out of the oven they sank. All I got was miserable looking cupcakes not like the perfect one shown in the book. However, all is not lost. With a bit of help from my mum, we improved the recipe. I tried the recipe again the next day.

Ingredients:-
60g white eating chocolate, chopped roughly
2 tbsp rose water
1/2 cup water (omitted this)
45g pistachio nuts, blended until fine
90g butter
220g brown sugar (this is too much and will cause cake to sink, reduce to 100g)
2 eggs
100g self raising flour (I used superfine flour, add 1/2 tsp baking powder)
2 tbsp plain flour

The method below is according to how we made it. The Women's Weekly directions can be found on their website.

Method:-
Preheat oven to 170°c and prepare cupcake liners on baking tray.

Blend pistachio nuts until fine.

Beat butter and brown sugar on low speed until smooth. Meanwhile, in a separate bowl sift flour and baking powder. 

Add eggs into butter mixture one at a time and continue to beat until smooth.

In a saucepan melt white chocolate. Once chocolate is melted add rose water and stir well. Add chocolate mixture into batter.

Fold in pistachios and fold in, followed by flour. 

Scoop batter into liners until 2/3 full. Bake for 20 minutes or until cake is cooked - determine by the toothpick method.

I was looking all over for turkish delight. Finally found some at Ben's Grocer, Publika. 

An assortment of flavours. I only used the rose ones for the cupcakes. A piece of turkish delight was quite big so I had to cube them for the topping. 


The cupcakes were delicious and smell like roses! Since I used natural rose extract (Queen's - note: it contains alcohol! If you don't take alcohol, you can substitute with Star Brand rose flavour and for a much cheaper price too). 

Each bite is filled with sweet-smelling roses. If you love roses you must try this. I just had the whole cupcake to myself this morning and it was so satisfying.


My bff came over to pass me some souvenirs. Sweet of her. I gave her one of these and she found the cupcake a bit sweet. To reduce white chocolate next time. It would be better too if the cake was lighter and more airy. She described the cupcakes as "romantic". Quite apt description. They are indeed romantic cupcakes and could be used for weddings too.

Happy baking! xx