Cupcakes, cupcakes and more cupcakes!
I love cupcakes. There's just something about their cuteness that makes me want to eat as many as I can. Not just any cupcakes mind you - they have to be homemade.
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Whip up a batch of cupcakes and invite the girls around for tea, or let the kids have an unexpected surprise - everyone loves cupcakes!
Ingredients
Cakes:
3 cups of flour
2 cups of sugar
240g butter
3/4 cup milk
4 extra-large eggs
2 tsp. baking powder
a pinch of salt (salt brings out the flavour in the cake, believe it or not)
Frosting:
4 cups icing sugar
125g butter
half a cup of milk
colouring if you like.
piping bag
nozzles
scissors
Instructions
For the cupcakes:
1. Heat your oven to 180 degrees.
2. Set out two 12-cup muffin tins with cupcake liners.
3. In a nice big mixing bowl, cream the butter until it’s smooth.
4. Add the sugar gradually and beat until the mixture is fluffy.
5. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each one.
6. Add the dry ingredients in three parts, alternating with the milk.
7. Spoon the batter into the cupcake liners! Each one should be about 3/4 full.
8. Bake for 20 minutes (or until a cake tester comes out clean).
For the frosting:
1. Every new piping bag needs to be cut so that the nozzle fits snugly into the bottom of it. Choose the nozzle you want to use and carefully estimate how much you need to cut off from the bottom of the bag so that it will fit tightly inside with just the end of the nozzle poking out. Snip off a little at a time – there’s no going back if you cut off too much so I suggest you take this bit very slowly. If you have a nozzle set, all nozzles will have the same diameter base so will fit into your cut piping bag.
2. Now that your nozzle tip is poking out the bottom of your piping bag, you can start to fill the bag with icing. Use a wooden spoon or spatula to pack the icing into the base of the bag and, if you roll the top of the bag back on itself, you will find this whole process a lot easier and less messy.
3. Get a feel for the bag, working the icing down to the bottom of it and giving it a little squeeze until you see the icing coming out through the nozzle.
4. And now for the fun part, get your naked cupcake ready. Starting from the outside and working anti-clockwise, squeeze your icing gently out of the nozzle. Work slowly. Once you’ve got to the middle of your cupcake, stop squeezing, dip the nozzle into the icing gently and lift off. Voilà. [spatula]
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Use a Cuisipro food decorating pen from Yuppiechef. With this amazing pen, you can write anything you like on your creations, and it is a whole lot of fun.
Decorate cupcakes with colourful flags and pinwheels
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Visit bakelovenotwar.co.za for recipe for black label cupcakes
