Orange Butter Sponge Cupcake

Velvety butter cup cakes with faint orange flavour coming from the juice and zest 🙂

Update: 22 Sep 2019
Sprinkled some dried cranberry bits over the batter before baking gave the cupcakes some gem-like decoration 😍
Steps and pictorial demonstration can be found at the end of the recipe.

Yield: 6 cupcakes 4.8x4.8 cm

Ingredients

All ingredients in room temperature
Using 55~58g Omega 3&6 egg

2 egg whites
1/8 tsp fine salt
50g fine sugar

2 egg yolks

60g top/cake flour
1g baking powder

20g orange juice
10g golden syrup/honey

20g unsalted butter, melted

5g orange zest

Directions

1. Mix orange juice with golden syrup/honey in a samll glass set aside.

2. Mix top/cake flour with baking powder in a small bowl. Set aside.

3. Melt unsalted butter in a small bowl and let it cool down to room temperature before use.

4. Beat egg whites to frothy. Add about 1/8 tsp of fine salt followed by first batch of fine sugar. Sugar to be added gradually in 3 batches.

Beat at high speed till reaching firm peak stage. Reduce the hand mixer speed gradually in the final 2 minutes.

5. Beat in the egg yolks, one at a time, to the meringue. Stop beating once the yolks have been completely mixed with the meringue.

6. Sieve the 1st batch of the flour mixture from Step 2, and mix briefly using the whisks manually.

Followed by 1/2 of the orange mixture from Step 1.

Mix in the rest of the flour mixture and orange mixture in alternating sequence.

Finally, use a spatula to give the batter a more thorough mix.

7. Transfer about 1/4 of the batter to mix with the melted butter from Step 3 which has been cooled to room temperature. Mix using a whisks till no more liquid butter can be seen.

Pour the butter-batter back to mix with the rest of the batter.

8. Mix in the orange zest.

9. Divide the batter among 6 paper cake cups.

Arrange the the filled cake cups over a baking tray.

10. Bake at middle rack of a preheated oven at ,130°C for 20 minutes.

Increase the oven temperature to 170°C and bake for about 10 minutes, to till the tops turn golden.

11. Transfer the cupcakes out of the oven to a cooking rack.

12. Enjoy it warm 😋

Keep the unconsumed cupcakes in the fridge, and warm up before serving 😀

Adding dried cranberry bits
1. Soak 10~15g of dried cranberries in hot water for about 1 minute. Drain away the water, and pat dry the cranberries. Cut the cranberries into smaller bits.

2.  Sprinkle the cranberry bits over the top of the batter just before baking.