Hay Hay! It's Donna Day - Self Frosting Cupcakes

This month is the launch of a new event called Hay! Hay! It's Donna Day that is hosted by Barbara at winosandfoodies over in New Zealand. I have been a fan of Donna Hay for ages, starting from when she was in Marie Claire and produced those wonderful award winning cookbooks; Cooking, Dining, Flavours and Food Fast (I have Flavours and Food Fast in my collection) Since she started her own magazine, I have been buying issues off and on from the newstand. Unfortunately I do not have the first issue of the magazine (which is where the cupcakes recipe came from), they only started selling them in Malaysia from the sixth issue onwards.

Discovering these self frosting cupcakes was wonderful and the recipe is so simple but brilliant as all Donna Hay's recipes are (now you know why their tagline is "Turn simple into special"). I used Nic's adapted recipe since she has tested and tried them and the results were fantastic as seen above in my Nutella version. Nice swirly action there plus the cupcake was so buttery that I want more! I am already planning my next batch; more layers of Nutella and chopped toasted hazelnuts for the ultimate indulgence. Ever since I made these cupcakes, I have been thinking of more outlandish adaptations compared to the mild tinkering I did below: dark chocolate ones with white chocolate sauce (I wonder if the mixture will be mixed up leaving no white streaks?), dark chocolate ones with orange marmalade (kinda like a jaffa cupcake) and etc etc.

As I was new to the recipe, I wasn't too adventurous with my adaption this round but I decided to give it a bit of a local flavour by swirling in some kaya, a coconut egg jam that is popular in Malaysia. The streaks are lighter since the kaya is light brown in colour. The kaya was a nice touch and I went all out to take pictures of the cupcakes with various items I dug out from the cupboards like this sunflower dish I have.



I stuck a little bear figurine I have (I forgot I had these which I used to collect long long ago in university) on top of the kaya swirled cupcake. Don't he look like he belongs on top of that cupcake?



Even the kitty cat could not resist the cupcake, here he is trying to take a nibble and lick at it in the garden. I took a quick picture of him trying to do that before I shooed him away.

Do head over to winosandfoodies for the round-up. I can't wait to see what other adaptations people will come up with as I want to try them all!