olliespops

The other day on Twitter I wondered out loud whether anyone had ever baked cupcakes with jelly babies in?  Before I knew it, a few people replied back and said, ‘no’ but that I should try.   So there was my challenge.  I thought if it was possible – would they taste nice or would they be rank?

So early yesterday morning, before work I placed some jelly babies in the freezer (less chance of melting in the oven) and left them there until late afternoon.  I ate one, just to see if it was frozen solid, but it wasn’t.  It was just a little more dense than your average jelly baby.

I thought that whilst I was adding treats to the middle of cupcakes, perhaps I would try out some other ideas too.  I raided the kitchen cupboards and found mini marshmallows, Terrys chocolate orange segments, Oreo biscuits and of course, the jelly babies.

I made a batch of my usual vanilla sponge mix and half filled the case (apart from one where I placed the Oreo at the bottom).  I was slightly worried about the Oreo in the mixture as I don’t like ‘soggy’ biscuits or sponge.  I can’t eat trifle with sponge in for this reason – the thought of soggy sponge makes me gag – am I only person who doesn’t like sponge in trifle?

Anyway, you can see the pre-cooked cupcakes below -waiting to go in the oven (poor jelly babies!)

After waiting for 23 minutes precisely, and then a little longer while the cakes cooled, I finally got to cut them open!

I was sorely disappointed!  The jelly babies had melted and were now  little pools of sticky chewy mess at the bottom of the cupcake case – I couldn’t even peel the wrapper off properly.  They tasted ‘interesting’ but I won’t be adding them to my menu any time soon.

I’m not going to be defeated on the whole jelly baby/cupcake scenario – so when I make buttercream icing next, I will be adding chopped jelly babies to the mixture – I think this would be a tasty combo!

Next up were the marshmallow cupcakes – most bizarre – the marshmallows had completely disappeared and left craters inside the cake! Magic!

The Terry’s chocolate orange slices faired much better and were quite delicious in the centre – and they actually stayed in one piece instead of melting through.  And I didn’t even freeze these segments…

The best results came from the Oreo’s in the cupcake – one with the Oreo at the base and one inside – and they weren’t soggy – much to my relief!  I will definately add these to my cupcake menu with vanilla icing with crush oreos on top.

Thank you for reading through my little experiments – I will be conducting more in the future as I found them fun and it was a good excuse to ‘sample’ so many cupcakes!

Back to the drawing board for jelly baby cupcakes – if anyone has any ideas, please let me know…..

Take Care,

Rach xx