Water Chestnut Cupcake 马蹄小蛋糕

I love this butter cupcake as it has a tinge of water chestnut taste and lots of tiny crunchy water chestnut bits within.

I adapted this recipe from an aged F&N NutriTea sugar cane and water chestnut drink recipe published about a decade ago. I kept the newspaper cutting pinned  to my fridge wall for more than a decade :)

Yield: 10 tall cupcakes or 12 shallow cupcakes

Ingredients

All ingredients at room temperature 

8 pieces water chestnuts 马蹄

185g all purpose flour 中筋面粉

1 tsp baking powder 泡打粉

1/4 tsp salt 盐

120g butter 牛油

130g caster sugar 细糖

1 tsp vanilla essence 香草精

2 eggs, separated 蛋，分开

30g fine sugar 细糖

125g water chestnut drink 马蹄水

Direction

1. Peel water chestnuts and dice coarsely. Set aside.

2. Use the chestnut peel to boil water chestnut drink with pandan leaf and rock sugar. Collect 125g from it.

3. Mix all purpose flour, baking powder and salt together. Set aside.

4. Whip butter till pale. Add in sugar and continue to whip till light and creamy. This takes about 5 minutes. Set aside.

5. Beat egg whites in a clean and grease-free mixing bowl till frothy. Gradually add the sugar and beat till firm peaks formed.

6. Gradually add in the egg yolks, one by one.

7. Add in the vanilla essence and blend well.

8. Gradually fold the egg batter into the  whipped butter in (4).

9. Sieve in 1/3 of the flour mixture from (3) into the batter. Fold in the flour using a spatula. 

Do not over mix. It's okay to have streaks of unmixed flour as the subsequent mixings will do away with it.

Add in 1/2 of the water chestnut drink from (2).

Finish up the remaining flour mixture and water chestnut drink by adding them alternatively.

In the sequence of

Flour ➡️water ➡️ flour ➡️ water➡️ ️flour

10. Add in the water chestnut bits from (1) and mix well.

11. Pour the batter into the cake mould, tap lightly to level the batter as well as to get rid of trapped air bubbles.

12. Arrange the cupcakes in a baking tray evenly spread out.

12. Bake in the middle rack of a pre-heated oven at 180 degree Celsius for about 35 to 40 minutes, or till an inserted skewer came out clean.

13. Allow the cupcake to cool down before serving.

Keep the unconsumed cupcakes in a fridge :)

Recipe adapted from 

Or online

http://www.nutritea.com.sg/recipe1.php