14: Bloody Cupcakes!

I both love and hate cupcakes. They are the bane of my existence and empyrean joy when I get them right; equally as deadly as biscuits, made even more so by our oven which sometimes overcooks or undercooks by 20 degrees depending on its mood, they can often be done on the outside and liquid in the middle, or I can't tell until they have had plenty of time and I've cut one open that they are still too soft in their guts. Those blasted elderflower cupcakes - which would never have happened if we hadn't got elderflower cordial so I could make James Ramsden's ice-cream - are a prime example of my difficulty with these tiny sponges. Too little cordial, and I produced perfectly soft and fluffy cupcakes with a faint taste of golden syrup and absolutely no elderflower perceptible. Too much cordial, and they were worthless wet rubbish, so damp that the paper case was wet underneath and so was the hollow in the muffin tin, and they hadn't cooked properly. Paul Hollywood's reproaches about messing with the structure of the cake batter resounded in my ears.