Chempedak and banana cupcakes recipe

When the food tastes good, looks doesn’t matter. That’s what I discovered today. I bake a batch of cupcakes using chempedak (the ugly cousin of the jackfruit) and bananas. Both not together but separate as these two tropical fruits have very strong flavour and smell on its own.

I have four over-ripen bananas which hubby was about to throw away. I mashed them up and mix with my cake batter and get a batch of these cupcakes which are so moist and delicious.

I was anxious to bake them in one batch and had used too much batter in each casing, hence the ugly, uneven and overflowing batter. I lamented my cakes are ugly. My little boy tried to comfort me by putting the little balls to decorate the photo. See? He gave it a perfect 10!

We bought a chempedak today and I tried making chempedak cupcake. This is my recipe which I modify from the butter cake recipe. I used brown sugar and evaporated milk and the taste of the cake is really milky and lemak. Nice! :

RECIPE : Chempedak, apple, banana or any kind of fruits, cupcake

Ingredients
1 block butter = 250 gm
230 gm soft brown sugar
4 eggs
250 self-raising flour
1 tsp vanilla essence
about 6 tbsp evaporated milk (or UHT)

Fruits – mash up about a rice bowl of fruits to add. You may want to separate the batter into different bowls and add the different kind of fruits. This way, you will have several types of cupcakes

Method :
Heat oven to 180 – 200 deg C. (180 deg will give you a moist cake, 200 deg will give you fluffier cake, the choice is yours)

In a mixer, beat butter and sugar till white and fluffy.
Add in eggs one at a time, alternating with flour.
Add vanilla essence to milk and mix in.
At this stage – separate your batter and add in mash fruits.
Check the consistency of the batter. It should be of dropping consistency. If it stands peaking and hard, add more milk. Pour into cupcake casings and bake for about 20 minutes.

The chempedak cake is really delicious and all disappeared the moment they get out of the oven. I have baked a bigger chempedak cake before but these lovely, little cupcakes with the evaporated milk and brown sugar have better taste than the whole chempedak cakes.

If you normally cannot finish a whole large cake, I suggest you try baking them in small casings. You can buy these cake casings and make them into tiny morsels. Do you know that it is almost impossible to bake a small cake by halving the quantities of the ingredients to say, 125 grams each? Somehow, the thing won’t mix well in the mixer. So, I usually mix 250 grams of the ingredients and end up with too large a cake. Another thing is, if you bake them in small casings, the texture of the cake is so much nicer.

The chempedak and durian are still in season. Go try baking them in cakes! Durian cake recipe here.