If you were wondering what the song was it was Bourgeois Shangri-La by Miss Li.

Unfortunately, I can’t find my favourite of its movie appearances – The Scent of Green Papaya – so I’ll have to play a scene from from the movie and the music separately. Apparently it’s in Twilight so the piece is all over the YouTubes.

Here’s the papaya scene:

Here’s the Debussy:

The animation is from a free MIDI animator.

I did two batches, a vanilla one and a flourless orange and almond one. The vanilla recipe is just my standard cupcake recipe which I’ve posted before (so too the buttercream icing). I also decorated the vanilla cupcakes with some passionfruit icing, an orange and sour cream icing and a plain orange icing.

I’ve given some approximate recipes for the icing, but it’s really up to how strong you want your flavours to taste (and fruit differs greatly in its ability to flavour) and how thick or flowing you want your consistency.

Passionfruit icing

adapted from Annabel Langbein’s “eat fresh – Cooking Through the Seasons” cookbook

Whip together the following:

• 3 tbsp passionfruit pulp (strained)
• 1 1/2 – 2  cups icing sugar
• 25g butter, well softened

Orange and Sour Cream icing

Whip together the following:

• 80 ml sour cream
• 1 cup  sifted icing sugar
• 1 tbsp freshly squeezed orange juice

Plain orange icing

• 1 tbsp freshly squeezed orange juice
• 1 cup sifted icing sugar

This cupcake tree was filled with plain vanilla cupcakes and iced with (going from top to bottom) buttercream icing, orange and sour cream icing and passionfruit icing.

The top cupcakes have simple orange icing and the others are the plain buttercream ones.

Close up of the buttercream decoration.

Close up of the passionfruit icing-ed cupcake - my favourite!

I decided to try a gluten free cupcake recipe from Susannah Blake’s Cupcake Heaven which was a present from my husband after I’d been eyeing it in the bookstore for several weeks. The cupcakes in it are wonderful but approachable. I doubled the recipe so it made 24.

Orange and Almond Cupcakes

makes 24

• 4 eggs
• 180g Caster Sugar
• grated zest of 2 oranges
• 160g ground almonds
• 6 Tbsps potato flour
• approx 80g flaked almonds
• icing sugar for dusting

Preheat the oven to 17oC (325F). Sift together the ground almonds and the potato flour, put aside. Whisk the eggs and sugar until thick and pale (this may take a while). Add in the orange zest, fold in the sifted ground almonds and potato flour.

Spoon the batter into cupcake cases and sprinkle the flaked almonds on top just before they go into the oven. Usually, you’d fill a cupcake case 2/3 of the way to allow for rise. Because these are flourless, there is no big rise so a bit higher is better.

The recipe calls for them to be baked for 22 minutes, however, my cases were on the small side so 15 minutes was plenty. You’ll know they’re ready when they are lightly browned. Turn them out on a wire rack and let them cool.

Once they have cooled off, dust with some icing sugar.

Gluten free orange and almond cupcakes

Close up of the flourless orange and almond cupcakes

My friend Sara's chocolate and hazelnut cupcakes! Very moist and tasty!

The following cupcakes were all cooked by Biff, Lexi and Tom of Fat little dumplings – and they posted the recipes too!

Strawberry cupcake assortment

More strawberry cupcakes!

Love the fruit artistry...

Lemon meringue cupcakes on show.

Cthulu and Evil Dead - courtesy of Tom. The Cthulu hair is rosewater Persian fairy floss.

Evil Dead cupcake up close.

She was going to go on to do much better with Otis Redding’s songs. I can’t say that I love the big band backing, it’s a little high school prom slow dance, but her voice is just pure perfection.

It’s from Aretha’s early confused and repressed years at the Columbia label before she found her voice (so to speak) at Atlantic Records. Columbia packaged up some of these into a compilation titled Queen in Waiting.

While her first album (I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You) at Atlantic is one of my all time favourite records, I am ever so grateful for those Columbia recordings so that we can hear her doing standards like this.

Here’s another standard, Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive,  from her 19620 second Columbia album, The Electrifying Aretha Franklin: