I bought some tinned lychees recently for use in a recipe to be posted soon. What I realised is I really like the fresh ones better and lychees and their cousin rambutan grow well up here (but just weren’t in season). Here is a rather lovely photo (if I do say so) of a rambutan.
Now I have been posting more, I have less time to look at other peoples posts. I took advantage of a quiet moment and had a look at Desert First fabulous blog. Low and behold she had a recipe for a lychee cake. Calling for the very same tinned lychees sitting in my fridge edging towards a use by date.
I halved the recipe which made 6 cupcakes and 3 mini cupcakes. The boys were not going to wait for adornment so not further decoration than the golden edges from the oven.
This was really lovely and quite simple so will get made again. I was also pleased that the recipe (leavening) didn’t need tweaking to made into cupcakes. I imagine this recipe would work well for other tinned fruits as well (peaches leap to mind).
As I slowly added the lychee syrup the mix curdled but came good with the addition of the flour.
The other thing I did was alter the technique slightly. I reserved 1/3 of the flour mixture to coat the lychee and added the remaining flour 1st to build a bit of structure (and prevent lumps of flour which I am paranoid about). This worked really well.
Lychee Butter Cake from Desert First
1- 14 oz can lychees (about 1 cup lychees, reserve the liquid)
2 cups (240g) flour (I used plain unbleached)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (160g) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup (160 g) sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 8×8 baking pan.
Drain the lychees and cut into small pieces; set aside.
Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl and set aside.
In a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar together on medium speed for several minutes until light and fluffy.
Add the eggs, one at a time, and then the vanilla. Mix to combine.
Add in about 4 -6 tablespoons of the reserved lychee liquid slowly. Mix between additions to fully incorporate before adding more.
Toss the lychee pieces in the flour mixture to coat (this will help keep them from sinking to the bottom of the batter). (As I wrote before I reserved 1/3 of the flour for the coating and added the flour mixture first and then the fruit covered in flour).
Add flour and lychee mixture to the batter and mix to combine.
Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake for 30-45 minutes, until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on wire rack before serving.
The mini cupcake size took 14 minutes and the cupcakes took about 20 minutes. (Conventional oven, bottom element only)
