Quick and easy vanilla cupcakes

Sometimes you just want comfort food and you don't want to make a huge fuss, or you just don't have the time. Its been a busy few weeks and I have been up and down the country going to weddings(!), then it was Easter and yet I haven't done much baking. Shameful! But, to be honest, I have been trying to sort of be good; my jeans just don't fit like they used to and I need to start getting fit for the 10km run I've volunteered myself for in the summer...

But the fact that this awful English weather is hanging about just makes me want to stay indoors and avoid the outside world. Seriously, getting caught in heavy downpours aint fun. I couldn't go for a run so instead made my all time favourite vanilla cupcakes and played with some purple colouring.  This pleases me. I hate being in the kitchen cooking but get me some flour and sugar and eggs and I'm in there pronto! Surely I can't be the only one....

St Patrick's Day green velvet cupcakes and shamrock cookies

Yes, I'm aware that this post is a few days late; one day I'll make it on time. In all fairness I did make the goods before St Patrick's Day, does that count? And I've been a bit busy, packing up and moving from the countryside to north London and then unpacking and getting used to a new kitchen (and new oven, which does now work). All these things take time, and yes, good things come to those who wait!  Haha, pun intended and yes I did get to enjoy some guinness over the weekend.

So, green velvet cupcakes... my goodness. What a pilaver. I ran out of green colouring and it ended up looking like pond green sludge. But from the outside it still looks alright, well sort of. Had to hide the cupcakes with lots of yummy cream cheese frosting. But the main thing is, they tasted amazing.

Not to forget the shamrock cookies, the dough I used, meant that you have to chill them overnight. So that took some time, but you know what, sandwiched together with buttercream frosting and these little beauties are worth all the time spent.

Boozy Sunday Tea Party

So for my friend's birthday, she decided she wanted a boozy tea party - ooh yeah, I like it already. So I wanted to make it something more than the usual tea party.. a concoction of gin and tonic and sambuca cupcakes, something you can eat EVEN with a hangover, which we did!!

I think these are actually best eaten the day after they have been made as the alcohol has really settled into the cake and you get the full flavour, but still tasty on the day they're made!

Perfect hangover cure

Ingredients for gin and tonic cupcakes:-

115g butter
130g castor sugar
3 eggs
195g all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
40ml Gordons gin

20ml tonic water

Method:-

Preheat the oven to 180C or gas mark 4.
Line a muffin tin with 12 cupcake liners.

Using an electric beater or whisk, beat the butter and sugar for a few minutes until light and fluffy and the sugar and butter lighten in colour. Add the eggs, one at a time beating quite thoroughly after each addition.

In a separate bowl, sieve the flour, baking powder and salt and add half of this to the egg mixture. Beat until combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and pour in half the tonic water. Beat again until combined and repeat the flour and use the gin until finished, alternating between the two.

Immediately, fill the cupcake liners and bake for about 20 mins. Don't forget to rotate the tray about half way through if you have a gas oven, to ensure evenly cooked.

You should have enough mixture to make 24 small-ish cupcakes or 20 decent sized cupcakes.

Remove from oven and leave in tray for a few minutes. Remove and then place cupcakes on a wire rack to cool. Don’t forget to remove from the muffin tray!

1st birthday duck and flower chocolate cupcakes

Ok, so its not every day your boss - a senior partner in a firm asks you to make cupcakes for his daughter's first birthday, so naturally I was over the moon excited as they chose my cupcakes over a well known bakery in London! The brief was ducks and flowers, which personally I thought is just too cute!

Bubble bath duckies

The cupcakes are chocolate but with vanilla icing in a variety of colours. For the fondant icing, you can purchase a box of multicolour fondant icing which makes life so much easier, or you can use white and use food colouring to create your own variety, for this I used purple!

Halloween cookies and cupcakes

So I couldn't decide whether to make cupcakes or cookies for halloween, then I thought I'd meet halfway, somewhere between a cookie and a cake!

I must admit this idea of mine (although great) did actually take ages to make partly because of the stencils I used - next time I might just get the right cookie cutters. Also, I was trying to aim for black cupcakes, but came out grey, but I have to admit the grey works so much better. It looks wrong to eat something so grey, but it tastes just as yummy!

I've not really done much for Halloween in the past few years, so I wanted to do something this year; like carve a pumpkin! Alas, I just didn't find the time, but I salute all those who did make pumpkins...

'Wear It Pink' ribbon cookies and cupcakes in aid of breast cancer campaign

I don't really care for pink, I'm more into darker colours like black and purple - but this was for a good cause, so i thought, heck why not. So instead of wearing a pink cardigan or shirt like everyone else, I wore pink floral tights and black shirt and skirt, ha!

I thought I'd get involved this year - I did the 'Race for Life' like erm.. a few good years ago, so this is my contribution to fighting cancer - with cupcakes and cookies!

I don't have a proper ribbon cookie cutter, but its quite easy to make a stencil and just use that to cut around the cookie dough. But it does take aaages! That's dedication or so I've been told...

I could have used the standard sugar cookie recipe, but I wanted these to be crisp and crunchy and also because the royal icing on these cookies can make the sugar cookies a bit soft, which you don't really want. I had lots of fun with these as you can see...

Chilli chocolate cupcakes

A red plate for red hot chilli peppers - nah not really..

I've wanted to make these cupcakes for a while now as I am quite fond of chilli; obviously in small doses. I'm not one for the extreme fiery heat of the chilli where you can't feel your tongue afterwards, but just that gentle warmth and aftertaste, where you know you've actually eaten chilli. Combine this with chocolate and you get a sweet cocoa flavour with a slight kick, not overpowering at all.  And being autumn / winter and all, chilli will help to keep the flu bugs away (hopefully).

I had so much fun making these little cupcakes. I bought some fondant icing - yeah, no way am I making that stuff up from scratch - The great thing was there were 5 colours in a box, all ready for me to play with. Seriously, it's just like playdough and you can create whatever takes your fancy, depends on how creative you want to be. I think I'm going to have a little play around and see what else I can make..

Peanut Butter and White Chocolate Cupcakes

Yummy!

So, since I created this blog, I got all excited and couldn't wait to get started but then real life caught up with me and kept me busy. Plus this blogging is all a bit daunting, I mean, what do you start off with? I couldn’t think properly and then it came to me last week... I was craving peanut butter!

Now I love peanut butter, the crunchy version obviously; it reminds me of when I was younger when I used to have peanut butter and syrup sandwiches for my packed lunch at school.  Nowadays, I like to think I have advanced onto peanut butter and nutella on toast. And, since I love cupcakes just as much it’s a match made in heaven, well I think so anyway. They’re ever so easy to make as well…

I suppose I should say, I’m no professional baker, I just have a passion for getting stuck in the kitchen making cakes or biscuits. I've been casually baking since a teenager, but now I'm definitely going to do this more often! HA!

The key point for any baking is to use REAL butter, it does actually give a richer, creamier texture and that’s what’s really important.

Ingredients:

For the cupcakes:-

115g butter
130g light brown sugar
3 eggs
200g all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
60ml whole milk
60g white chocolate chips
2 tblsp crunchy peanut butter
 
Preheat the oven to 170C or gas mark 4. Line a muffin tin with 12 cupcake liners.

Using a hand beater or if you are lucky enough to have an food mixer, beat the butter and sugar for a few minutes until light and fluffy, the sugar will actually lighten. This takes about 4 minutes or so. Add the eggs, one at a time beating quite thoroughly after each addition.
Sieve the flour, baking powder and salt and add half to the egg mixture. Beat until combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and pour in half the milk. Beat again until combined and repeat the flour and milk process. Add white chocolate chips and the peanut butter and using your spatula gently fold into the mixture.

Immediately, fill the cupcake liners – this mixture is enough to make 24 cupcakes.

Bake for about 20 minutes but check often. If you have a gas oven, you will need to turn the cupcakes around after 10 minutes to ensure evenly cooked and browned.

Remove from oven and place cupcakes on a wire rack to cool. Don’t leave them in the muffin tin as they will sweat and get soggy!

Ensure cupcakes are completely cooled before adding the icing.

The smell of hot peanut butter is just so enticing...

For the icing:-

250g icing sugar
125g butter
2 tblsp whole milk
1 tblsp peanut butter
White chocolate for decorating

With your hand mixer or food processor, cream butter and icing sugar until smooth. This will look more like a dough mixture than icing, but don’t worry. Add the milk 1tblsp at a time and peanut butter. If mixture still feels too stiff add some more milk. If you want to pipe the frosting, I usually use the largest star one, this gives a lovely swirl effect.

However, my piping bag decided to explode on me – so I had to make this mixture all over again and ice by hand, painstaking! Fear not, I shall soon be off to Lakeland to purchase a lovely new icing set, every cloud and all that…. J

Finish off with white chocolate chips or shavings and enjoy!

Finally got a use for my cakestand!