Taste the exotic with these Turkish delight cupcakes. These Turkish delight cupcakes have a Turkish delight surprise inside, and both the cupcakes and frosting are delicately flavoured with that signature Turkish delight flavour.
Hello friends! I hope you’ve had a great weekend?
Unfortunately mine wasn’t too great. Everything in our home seems to be breaking down at the moment. From our washing machine, kettle, my backup DSLR camera *sobs*, my backup external hard drive with all my blogs exported photos, etc. on it, to my oven… yet again!
I mean, what the heck is going on here? Anyone would think I’m emitting electro magnetic pulses with all the electrical’s that have gone down this weekend! π
But seriously, that external hard drive contained multiple folders for all sorts of different things. How strange of it to pick out the ‘blog’ folder from them all, then deciding to go corrupt taking all my blog files, photos, backups, and data along with it!
Moral of that story, one backup is not enough. Make backups of your backups! Le sigh.
Then on Sunday, the giant man-baby has taken my main DSLR and main lenses I use for my food photography with him to watch the flyby of WWII planes over the Dam Busters site. I thought it would be no problem as I had my other DSLR as a backup and other lenses.
Got everything set up and styled ready for their photo shoot and wham, bam, thank you ma’am; error reading/writing to the memory card. Tried a few different memory cards, all had the same problem. And the giant man-baby didn’t get home until almost midnight. Pfft!
But I did manage to get the photos done today, which has totally messed up my plans getting this post out in time for cupcake week, last week. I’m sorry cupcake week, can you ever forgive me?
Speaking of cupcake week, did you enjoy any cupcakes last week during cupcake week? π I’m not sure whether cupcake week last week is perhaps a UK thing, or if it gets celebrated internationally, too?
Maybe it’s like our Mother’s Day here. We celebrated Mothering Sunday here in March this year, yet in the US, I believe it’s celebrated in May.
I couldn’t let cupcake week just pass by without any cupcakes, so I decided to make something a little different that’s perhaps missing its place in the cupcake world… Turkish delight surprise inside cupcakes.
Yup, that’s right. Heavenly floral Turkish delight cupcakes.
These aren’t any ordinary cupcakes though. They’re incredibly fluffy and have a fine crumb thanks to the addition of cornflour (cornstarch), and in addition to that, they’re made with a wonderful new innovative product that literally blows my mind…
Flavoured icing (confectioners’) sugar. My mind aspolde! Sugar and Crumbs sells a whole bunch of flavoured icing sugars from banana split, black forest, coconut, coconut & lime, coffee, green apple, key lime, pink lemonade, salted caramel, and so many more. They even sell flavoured cocoa powder too.
I decided to go with Turkish delight as I haven’t had any Turkish delight in so long, I was craving some!
Instead of using the icing sugar to make the frosting, I decided to use the icing sugar to replace the sugar in the cupcake recipe itself. This resulted in a cupcake that tastes like Turkish delight, but in glorious cupcake form.
I then knew I wanted a surprise inside cupcake, and a piece of real Turkish delight it had to be, to amp up that delicate flavour. And armed with my new OXO cupcake corer made coring these cupcakes a breeze. I’ve tried a few cupcake corers in time, but the OXO cupcake corer is the best corer I’ve ever used.
For the frosting, I made Turkish delight frosting too. As a whole, these Turkish delight cupcakes are subtly flavoured and aren’t overpowering.
As a child, I couldn’t stand Turkish delight myself. I remember a holiday (vacation) in Turkey and was surrounded by the stuff. As an adult, I love it now! π
Are you a fan of Turkish delight?

Turkish Delight Surprise Inside Cupcakes
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 16 minutes
Yield: 12 cupcakes
These turkish delight cupcakes have a Turkish delight surprise inside, and both the cupcakes and frosting are delicately flavoured with that signature Turkish delight flavour.
Ingredients:
CUPCAKES
- 225g unsalted butter, softened
- 225g Turkish delight flavoured icing sugar, see notes
- 4 eggs
- 172g plain (all-purpose) flour, sifted
- 3½ tbsp cornflour (cornstarch)
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 3 packs Turkish delight, I used Fry’s
FROSTING
- 225g unsalted butter, softened
- 450g Turkish delight icing sugar, sifted
- 2 tbsp single cream, see notes
- pink food colouring, optional
Directions:
Cupcakes
- Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4, and line a muffin tin with cupcake liners. Set aside.
- Cream the butter for 1 minute until smooth, then gradually add the Turkish delight flavoured icing sugar, one spoon at a time to prevent icing sugar smog, until incorporated, then beat on high speed until pale, fluffy and frosting consistency.
- In another bowl, sift the plain (all-purpose) flour, cornflour (cornstarch), and baking powder.
- On low-medium speed, add an egg followed by a little of the flour mixture and repeat until eggs and the flour mixture have been incorporated.
- Spoon the batter into the preprepared liners to around ½ – ¾ full, then bake for 16-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
- Allow the cupcakes to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Chop the Turkish delight into small pieces that would fit into a cored cupcake. You can use your cupcake corer as a guide. At this stage, you can chop additional pieces for garnishing the frosting, if desired. Set aside.
- Once the cupcakes are cool, core the cupcakes saving the cores, and fill each cupcake with a piece of chopped. Replace with the core, trimming to size if needed.
Frosting
- Beat the butter on medium/high until smooth.
- Add the flavoured icing sugar one spoon at a time until incorporated, add the single cream and beat on high until pale, light and fluffy.
- Colour the frosting with a small amount of pink gel food colouring if desired, and spoon into a piping bag with an open star nozzle.
- Pipe each cupcake with a swirl, and if using, immediately attach a piece of Turkish delight as garnish. Repeat with the remaining cupcakes.
- Store cupcakes in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days.
NOTES:
- Yield depends on the size of cupcake liners you use. This recipe yields at least 12 large bakery-style cupcakes, and more for smaller sized liners. If using smaller liners, ensure you reduce baking time accordingly.
- If you cannot get your hands on the flavoured icing sugar, for the cupcakes, substitute with granulated sugar and add 1-2 tsp of rose water to the cupcake batter. For the frosting, replace the flavoured icing sugar with regular icing sugar and add 1-2 tsp of rose water again, to taste.
- If you’re in the US, single cream is very similar to your half and half, so feel to substitute with half and half, or milk.


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These cookies look cute and very delicious!
Hehe, cookies? I don’t see a cookie here. :p
Thanks for stopping by.
Sucks that so much of yours is breaking at the moment – I feel for you it does all come at once!
These look fab though, WANT. WANT THEM ALL!
It’s just ongoing, love. Have you seen the latest sh*t bomb to hit us?
Maybe we should perhaps get together one day and have a big baking sesh, followed by a scoff sesh of course. π
These cupcakes are absolutely stunning, Lisa! That swirl of frosting is perfectly pink and I would love to chow down into one of these right about now! π
WOW! I LOVE these!!!! What super cute cupcakes, I love the pretty turkish delight icing with the turkish delight choccie in it! Such a great idea for turkish delight lovers (like me!)
Not had Turkish Delight for years – I suspect I may enjoy it a lot more than I did as a child. These cupcakes look so pretty and inviting. Please feel free to join in with #bakeoftheweek x
Oh Lisa, I can feel your pain, my hard drive crashed this past weekend and I would have lost everything, except I bought some little plug in thingy at Staples this summer and had it installed which saved everything. Well, almost everything, after my computer had some virus, I didn’t get the thingy installed correctly, so I lost three weeks of photos which were mostly of tutorials I had done from the last party I hosted.
Anyway, your cupcakes turned out beautiful and sound so delicious, I didn’t even know I missed cupcake week, so I’m going to pretend this week is cupcake week! π
Ugh, that sucks Kim. I’m glad you managed to save most of your files on the memory stick you got. But that’s exactly what I did thinking that my files were safe on my external hard drive. My computer didn’t fail, it was the external plugin hard drive that failed. So I’d definitely recommend getting another device and doing a double backups to all 3 just in case the others failed like mine did. I don’t save my files on my computer though, straight to the external, so because that failed, I had nothing on my computer to fall back on.
I’m not sure whether the cupcake week was a UK thing or international. Never did manage to look that up. Thanks Kim.
Why must everything break at once? That’s always the way it happens. I feel like these cupcakes are the perfect way to make yourself feel better. Love ’em!
I know, so darn annoying it seems things seem to all go at the same time. The cupcakes were definitely a good way to de-stress. Nothing beats sugar to perk you up… literally! π
Thanks for stopping by Jennie. π
What stunning cupcakes, these are the perfect mix of turkish delight meets fantasy π
YUM!
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
Hmmm they look delicious! Hope you are doing fine π
love rebecca
Thanks Rebecca. π
Oh no sorry to hear about everything falling apart but those cupcakes look like such a treat! I’ve never actually heard of flavoured icing sugar, never seen them here in Australia but would love to try baking with it!
The flavoured icing sugar is relatively new here, so I imagine it won’t take long before it catches on and other brands start making it around the world. Otherwise, you could try contacting Sugar and Crumbs or attempting to order on their website. They’re sweet and generous so might even send you some samples. π
Thanks for stopping by.