Making Lavender Trust cupcakes with a passion for charity
By Christina Lam

No doubt many of you will remember Diana, Princess of Wales, for her wonderful charity work. The same might be said about the beautiful and stylish 'cooking goddess' Nigella Lawson,  food writer and TV star, who has won the hearts of many using her cooking inspirations as a way to show support for charity. Her most famous and recent work in 2007 includes supporting the Lavender Trust at Breast Cancer Care, a charity which makes a difference to the quality of life of younger women dealing with breast cancer.

Nigella's passion for supporting Breast Cancer Care started in 1996 when Ruth, the sister of her close friend Justine, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Their friendship grew even more through a shared experience of the disease. Nigella decided to create a recipe for lavender cupcakes for serving at a coffee morning or tea party in order to raise money for the London charity Lavender Trust at Breast Cancer Care which was set up in Ruth's memory.

Nigella found instant fame with hundreds of thousands of strangers when her lavender cupcakes were displayed at a fundraising event at the Sanderson Hotel in London. Her cupcakes sold well – like hot cakes, you might say – and the fundraising event was indeed a success.  A few months after the event, Nigella included the recipe for Lavender Trust Cupcakes in her book Forever Summer (Chatto & Windus, 2002).

When describing the inspiration behind the cupcakes for breast cancer cause, Nigella said: "The recipe for Lavender Trust Cupcakes had an emotional context. It's part of the narrative of our lives. I like to think I made cupcakes as a child, but I probably didn't. I started making them with my own children when they were very young for birthday parties and so on. I noticed that it was their friends' parents whose faces lit up when they saw the cupcakes. Adults always seem to like the pale pink cupcakes with cherries on top, or with wafer roses, which look so lovely – the perfect way of creating something pretty when you're cack-handed like me."   

Nigella has also shown her wholehearted support for breast cancer awareness by creating a limited edition lavender version of her Living Kitchen Measuring cups for the Lavender Trust at Breast Cancer Care. These measuring cups are the latest addition to Nigella Lawson's Living Kitchen range and were largely inspired by her day-to-day experience in the kitchen. She designed them with Sebastian Conran, a director at design firm Conran & Partners.

Commenting on the benefits of her contribution, Nigella said: "Words can't express how valuable The Lavender Trust is. The work it funds makes such a difference to the quality of life of younger women with breast cancer. So I'm really pleased to do this one-off, 'appropriately lavender-hued' edition of my measuring cups to raise money on its behalf."

Nigella, now a household name in England, has since made three TV cooking series and one Christmas special. The first series of Nigella Bites contains five half-hour episodes and the second series has ten episodes. There is a one-hour Christmas special and a Forever Summer series of eight half-hour episodes.  She has also hosted her own talk show Nigella which features celebrity guests, cooking slots and 'viewer dilemmas'.  Nigella has also been featured on The Biography Channel and owns her own line of stylish and practical kitchenware. Accordingly, it is her own 'elegant-but-earthy beauty, brainy-but-basic, sexy-peasant-with-a-pedigree' persona that has made her such a sensation in England.

The limited edition lavender version cups are available online at www.blisshome.co.uk for the special price of £20. They are beautiful as well as practical, and come with an exclusive recipe for a simple and delicious seed bread. Royalties and proceeds from the sale go directly to the Lavender Trust.
 

Lavender Cupcakes This recipe is included in Nigella's cookbook Forever Summer and is available at on her website. You can decorate the cupcakes with sprigs of lavender or lavender sugar. To make lavender sugar, cut up a few lavender sprigs and store them in a jar of caster sugar for a few days. Ingredients for the cupcakes (makes 12) 125g self-raising flour 125g very soft unsalted butter 125g lavender sugar sieved 2 eggs pinch salt few tablespoons milk  Ingredients for the icing 250g Instant Royal icing powder violet food colouring paste handful of real lavender stalks Method Preheat the oven to 200ºC/gas mark 6 and line a 12-bun cupcake or muffin tin with paper cases. Remove butter, eggs and milk from the fridge in time to make sure they're at room temperature. Put all the ingredients for the cupcakes, except for the milk, into the bowl of a food processor fitted with a double-bladed knife, and blitz till totally combined. Process again, adding enough milk to make a batter with a smooth, flowing texture, then remove the blade and spoon and scrape the batter equally into the waiting cupcake cases. Remember the cakes rise as they bake. There is enough mixture to fill each case adequately even if you panic when you first look at it. Bake for about 20 minutes, by which time the sponge should be cooked through and springy to the touch. Remove from the oven, leave for 5 minutes or so, then arrange the cupcakes in their paper cases on a wire rack to cool. Once they're cool, you can get on with the icing. You want the icing to sit thickly on the cupcakes not run off them, and you can aid this by cutting off any risen humps with a sharp knife first, so that each cake is flat-topped. Be careful if you're icing over any cut surface. No crumbs dislodged and left behind to besmirch the smoothness of the topping. Make the icing according to packet instructions. Dye the mixture a faint lilac with a spot or two of food colouring. I like to use the solid pastes for which you may have to go to a specialist cake decoration shop, I'm afraid. The colour you'll want here is generally labelled 'grape violet'. Go carefully, though. We want pastel serenity here, not 70s' 'record-sleeve murk'. Top each pretty-pale cupcake with a little sprig of lavender before the icing's set dry.

Return to Volunteer Life

The Centre for Volunteering [ABN 28 002 416 024]
Level 2, 228 Pitt Street, Sydney NSW 2000
T: 02 9261 3600 | F: 02 9261 4033 | E: info@volunteering.com.au
www.volunteering.com.au