Vulva cupcakes

This is the Venus of Hohle Fels, carved out of a mammoth tusk some thirty-five or forty thousand years ago. Take a good look at it: it's a vulva. People were making art out of it forty thousand years ago, and you're still sitting at home on your ass and maybe you've never even seen one. So first a little anatomy lesson, and then the best way to remember it: cupcakes. Vanilla cupcakes with a raspberry jam heart, a pink buttercream from the 19th century, and a vulva sculpted from white chocolate clay. And if you want to go all the way, pubic hair spun from caramel. Perfect for a date. Just don't forget about consent.

This makes 12 cupcakes over two days: the clay, the cream and the jam on day one, the baking and the sculpting on day two.

Ingredients

Chocolate clay:

• 200 g good white chocolate (it has to contain cocoa butter: the cheap stuff is often just palm oil)
• 90 g glucose syrup
• Red or pink gel food colouring
• A little icing sugar, for rolling

Raspberry jam:

• 150 g raspberries, fresh or frozen
• 25 g sugar
• 1-3 tsp lemon juice

The cream:

• 15 g plain flour
• 75 g sugar
• 115 ml whole milk
• 85 g soft unsalted butter
• 1 tsp vanilla paste or extract
• A small pinch of salt
• Red or pink gel food colouring

The cupcakes:

• 150 g plain flour
• 1¼ tsp baking powder
• ⅛ tsp salt
• 60 g unsalted butter
• 125 ml whole milk
• 2 large eggs (or three small ones), at room temperature
• 150 g caster sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1½ tsp neutral rapeseed oil

Caramel hair (optional, but come on):

• 100 g sugar
• 30 g glucose syrup
• 2 tbsp water

Optional:

• Sweetened condensed milk, for drizzling

This is how you do it!

Day one, the chocolate clay:

1. Melt the white chocolate. Most recipes tell you to melt it over simmering water, but the microwave is easier and just as good: low power, about 150-250 W, 30 seconds at a time, stirring in between. Three or four rounds and it's smooth. Blast it on full power and it burns, the oil splits out and you've got a dick instead of a vulva.
2. Warm the glucose syrup until it's about the same temperature as the chocolate, pour it in and fold it in slowly with a spatula. It comes together quickly into a thick paste. Stop as soon as it does: stir too hard or too long and the cocoa butter splits. If it doesn't come together, add a little more glucose.

   

3. Spread it out on baking paper, cover it with more paper and seal it in a plastic bag. Leave it at room temperature for at least 2 hours, overnight is even better.

   

Day one, the raspberry jam:

1. Put the raspberries, the sugar and the lemon juice in a small pot and let it cook on low heat for 5-8 minutes, stirring now and then. When it's thick enough to hold on the spoon, it's jam. Let it cool, then into the fridge.

   

Day one, the cream:

1. This is a buttercream from the 19th century, made on a cooked pudding instead of a mountain of icing sugar. Whisk the flour and the sugar together in a small pan, then whisk in the milk slowly so there are no lumps. Cook it on medium heat, stirring all the time, for 3-6 minutes, until it boils and thickens into a pudding.

   

2. Let it cool to about 27°C. Not too cold, but not warmer either, or it melts the butter. Then beat it with a mixer, adding the soft butter a little at a time, then the vanilla and the salt. Whip it for 4-6 minutes, until it's light and silky.

   

3. Colour it pale pink with a tiny bit of gel colouring (gel adds no liquid). Put about 2 tbsp of it in a second bowl and colour that one darker. Cover both and put them in the fridge overnight.

   

Day two, the cupcakes:

1. Heat the oven to 160°C fan (180°C without). Whisk the flour, the baking powder and the salt together. Melt the butter in the milk slowly: hot, but don't let it boil.
2. Whip the eggs with an electric mixer, adding the sugar gradually, for about 6 minutes, until pale, thick and about three times the volume. You can do it by hand if you want to. I'm lazy.

   

3. Add the dry stuff in three portions, on the lowest speed, and only until the flour disappears. You're not making bread: no gluten wanted here.

   

4. Stir the vanilla and the oil into the warm milk, then whisk a ladle of the batter into the milk and pour it all back into the batter on low speed. Tempering it like this keeps the eggs from turning into scrambled eggs.
5. Fill a muffin tin about two-thirds full. A silicone one is easiest, but paper cases or a metal tin work too. Bake for about 22 minutes, until a toothpick comes out dry. Let them cool completely.

   

6. Pour the jam into a squeeze bottle (cut the opening a bit bigger, or the seeds clog it) and pump about a teaspoon into the middle of each cupcake. You could eat them like this already. Don't.

   

Day two, the vulva:

1. Take the cream out of the fridge while the cupcakes cool. It's hard, so let it soften, then whip it quickly until it's soft and smooth again.
2. Unwrap the chocolate clay. It's hard at first, but the heat of your hands makes it soft and pliable, like playdough you can eat. Cut it into pieces: keep about a quarter for the pale outer folds, and knead red colouring into the rest until it's the pink of the cream. Then give one piece even more, for a proper deep dark red.

   

3. Spread the pale pink cream on each cupcake, nice and smooth, in a gently raised oval.

   

4. Cut a little slit down the middle, put the darker cream in a bag, snip off the tip and squeeze it into the slit.

   

5. Roll the clay out very, very thin, dusted with a little icing sugar if it sticks to the pin. Cut wavy strips and pinch them into little ruffled petals. Vulvas can have big labia or small labia. It doesn't matter: they're all beautiful.

   

6. Roll a tiny piece of the dark pink into a little pearl, and wrap a thin bit of clay over it: the clitoris and its hood, at the top. Now you know where it is. Maybe next time you'll find it in real life too.

   

7. Put the darker, smaller folds on the inside and the bigger, lighter ones on the outside, and press them gently into the cream. Cooking tweezers help, but fingers work: if you know how to work your fingers, everyone will be happy. Make them a bit uneven: every one looks different. A tiny hole under the clitoris is where the pee comes out, and below it the vaginal opening.

   

Big labia, small labia, long ones, short ones, ruffled or smooth: make every one different, like the real thing.

Bonus, the caramel hair:

1. Boil the sugar, the glucose and the water to exactly 150°C (use a thermometer). Careful: sugar this hot burns like hell. And never put your penis in it.

   

2. Lay two wooden spoons over some baking paper. Dip a fork in the caramel and flick it quickly back and forth over the spoons: it spins into thin threads, like cotton candy.

   

3. Gather the threads and put them on the cupcake. That's pubic hair. Naturally blonde. You can do a seventies bush, a landing strip, or another colour entirely. Do it right before serving: sugar hair melts if it waits.

   

Optional additions:

1. Right before serving, drizzle a little sweetened condensed milk over the top. It runs down the folds and over the edge, sticky and sweet. You know exactly what it looks like.

   

Final Step: Eat!

Soft vanilla sponge, a raspberry heart, silky pink cream and a sweet little chocolate vulva on top, with or without its blonde bush. It's so good that if you make it on a date with someone who likes you, and you like them back, you might really have a chance. It's a real vagina opener. Just don't forget about consent.