Purple bowl: Hokkaido cupcakes with strawberry cream filling recipe

I love Hokkaido cupcakes! Its soft and melt-in-the-mouth sponge cake together with the sinful yet yummy whipped cream is simply irresistible.

During my sponge cake exploration, I baked Hokkaido sponge cupcakes multiple times in search for the best recipe. Below is the recipe I am happy with after tweaking the recipe from KitchenTigress. This recipe produces a light, soft and fluffy sponge cake. I have been baking other flavours of sponge cupcakes by tweaking this recipe as well and it works magically all the time.

Other than the sponge cake, the whipped cream is as important because it helps to turn a cupcake into a superstar. I reckon the sweetness of the whipped cream is very much dependent on individual preferences. Joy of baking has a good video tutorial on how to make a simple whipped cream as well as fruits and chocolate flavoured whipped cream.

Well, I baked my favourite Hokkaido cupcakes again. This time, I baked them using paper cups (which help to hold the shape) instead of cupcake cases. Besides that, I piped the cupcakes with strawberry cream filling. Look! These Hokkaido cupcakes look so adorable.

Recipe:

(12 cupcakes with big cupcake cases, 16 cupcakes with paper cups)

The sponge cake:

60g egg yolks

25g castor sugar

50g corn oil

80g milk

85g cake flour

180g egg whites

55g castor sugar

1. Whisk egg yolks and sugar in a mixing bowl until pale and thick.

2. Add corn oil and whisk to combine.

3. Add milk and stir to combine.

4. Sift in cake flour and mix well. Leave the batter aside.

5. Beat the egg white in a mixing bowl.

6. Gradually add in the sugar when the egg white starts to thicken. Beat until stiff peak stage.

7. Add the egg white mixture onto the egg yolks mixture in 3 batches. Mix until they are almost combined on each addition. Lastly, scrape down and fold until every thing is evenly combined. Bang the batter on the table for a few times to release the big air bubbles.

8. Pour the batter into the cupcake cases, about 3/4 full each. Otherwise, you end up having tall cupcakes like mine. LOL.

9. Bake in the preheated oven at 165c for about 25mins on the lower rack.

10. Remove the cupcakes from the oven and let them cool on the wired rack.

Strawberry whipped cream:

300ml whipping cream

1 1/2 tablespoons castor sugar

A few drops vanilla extract

2/3 cup strawberry purée

1. Pour whipping cream onto a chilled mixing bowl over a bowl of ice water. Add in sugar and vanilla extract. Beat until the cream is at soft peak stage.

2. Add in strawberry purée and beat until stiff.