Strawberries and Cream "Cupcakes"

Don't be fooled by the name, these are in fact muffins even though the recipe says 'cupcakes'. Its from one of those 'cupcake' recipe books that actually randomly tell you to use muffin trays for some recipes and cupcake trays for others. Anyway it makes 16 muffins. Luckily, for once I actually read the entire recipe and found out it was a muffin recipe before I got the cupcake tray out. Enough of that, its a muffin recipe lets move on. Mr & soon-to-be-Mrs Pizzaman said they were very sweet - which I took to be a good thing, but I think I probably have a sweet tooth so I would like it ;-)

Ingredients:
- 225g unsalted butter softened
- 225g caster sugat
- 225g self-raising flour
- 4 eggs 
- 1 tsp vanilla essence

Topping:
- 350ml whipping cream
- 4 tbsp icing sugar, sieved
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 375g sliced small strawberries (or normal sized strawberries if, like me, you can't find small ones!)
- 4 tbsp strawberry jelly
- 1 tbsp water

Method:
Step 1: Preheat the oven to 175degreesCelcius. Place paper baking cases in muffin tins.

Step 2: Combine all the cupcake ingredients in a medium bowl and beat with an electric whisk until smooth and pale, about 2 to 3 minutes

Step 3: Spoon batter into the muffin cases and bake for 20min. Remove from oven and cool for 5 min then remove cupcakes and cool on a rack.

Step 4: For the Topping, whisk cream, icing sugar and vanilla in a small bowl until soft peaks form. Spoon onto cooled cupcakes and arrange the strawberries on top.

Step 5: In a small saucepan heat the jelly and water until melted.

Brush the mixture on top of the strawberries. Chill until ready to serve. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2days.