These Crushed Raspberry Cupcakes have vanilla bases topped with pink buttercream flavoured with crushed raspberries and their juice.
Updated 2026 · Now with printable recipe, similar to the one from my book. This version omits white chocolate. The original post is preserved underneath the printable recipe.
I was originally inspired by a photo of raspberry cupcakes in a Donna Hay book although my version went in a different direction and didn’t use real cream.
Crushed Raspberry Cupcakes
Equipment
- 12-hole muffin tin lined with paper cases
Ingredients
For The Cupcakes:
- 125 g butter unsalted, softened
- 125 g caster sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 125 g self raising flour
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
For The Raspberry Buttercream:
- 150 g butter unsalted, softened
- 300 g icing sugar sifted - plus a bit extra to thicken the icing
- 150 g raspberries fresh
- 1 dab pink gel food colouring optional
Instructions
For The Cupcakes:
- Preheat oven to 180°C (gas mark 4).
- In a mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
- Beat in the eggs one at a time, and the vanilla extract and mix until just blended.
- A third at a time, beat in the flour until just combined.
- Spoon the batter evenly between the cupcake cases and bake for 18–22 minutes. Leave in the tin to cool for a few minutes before transferring to a wire cooling rack. Cool completely.
For The Raspberry Buttercream:
- Using an electric hand mixer or stand mixer, beat butter and icing sugar until smooth. Next take 6-7 raspberries and crush them into the buttercream until completely mixed. As they release juice, you may need some extra icing sugar to return the buttercream to thicker consistency. Optionally you can add a dab of pink food colouring.
- Thickly spread the pink buttercream onto the cooled cupcake bases.
- Decorate the tops with the remaining fresh raspberries and serve.
Notes
I should come clean. It’s now the fifteenth of the month I have not yet posted one recipe yet from my monthly Bake Five challenge. This month I am cooking from Donna Hay’s “Modern Classics: Book 2 ” subtitled “Cookies, Biscuits, Slices, Small Cakes, Cakes, Desserts, Hot Puddings, Pies and Tarts” but I have not posted about anything yet.
The truth is, whereas 4 out of 5 of last month’s Rachel Allen recipes were a rip roaring success, I’ve followed a couple of Donna recipes now but neither of them have worked. Donna’s book features a chapter each on the aforementioned list of treats above and at the end of each chapter there is a section called “short order” which gives recipes for classic components that are used in a variety of other recipes – such as different sauces, pastries etc. So far I have attempted créme patissière and peanut brittle (although using pecans) and both have refused to solidify. I am hoping to crack the créme patissière in a further attempt and I will write about the pecan brittle in my forthcoming post on macaroons.
It’s high time I attempt one of the cake recipes then. It’s also several weeks since I posted about any cupcakes. I chose Cupcakes with Crushed Raspberry Cream made with some fabulous smelling Essex Tiptree raspberries (they who make Tiptree jam). These raspberries, grown under 30 miles away, even qualified as local produce in my nearest Waitrose.
Well I really am cheating now, I must confess that being disillusioned with my experience using this book so far I have only used Donna’s recipe as a suggestion and gone my own way. For this reason I am not posting the recipe today. I used vanilla cupcake bases and made up my own topping. Instead of lopping of the tops and sandwiching them back on the cakes with real cream and raspberries in the style of a cream tea, I have whipped up some pink buttercream with the crushed fruit. Also I dropped some white chocolate chunks into the cake mix.
I thought I had nailed the reason that some fairy cakes erupt in the oven like little volcanoes – I thought this was only happening when I used real butter and that baking margarine never did it. This batch were made with baking margarine but still erupted a bit. Nor did they rise as much as previous batches but I am not sure why. Maybe it was the white chocolate? The chunks appeared to have sunk mostly to the bottom so next time I would try melting the chocolate and stirring it into the batter before putting in the oven – although perhaps that would make them even less likely to rise. Suggestions on a postcard please!
These are my favourite cupcakes so far. Dare I say it, they look better than the ones in Donna’s book. They look as good as anything I’ve bought from cupcake bakeries, the buttercream tasted entirely of raspberry without any additional flavouring and my sponge was certainly not dry like some of them. I would be confident of selling cupcakes as good as this. I intend to try a blue batch using blueberries or blackberries soon.
