^ Cupcake Creations ^

Hello lovelies!!

After saying I would for ages, I finally got around to making cupcakes! And it's the start of National Cupcake Week. Good timing, no?

Here are my cupcake creations!

Recipes

(Borrowed from the incredibly talented Milly!!)

Cupcakes

This is for 12 cupcakes:

4oz Caster Sugar

4oz Butter

WHIZZ*

2 Large Eggs

6oz Self Raising Flour

Pinch of salt

Drop of Vanilla Extract

WHIZZ

Add to some suitably pretty cupcake cases

Put them in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius for 15-18 minutes (slightly longer than Milly specified but ours weren't quite ready after 10-12 minutes)

*WHIZZ of course means mix with a hand held electric whisk :D

Frosting

(Borrowed from the Hummingbird Bakery Cook Book)

250g Icing Sugar

80g Unsalted Butter

WHIZZ

25ml Milk

Few drops of Vanilla Extract

WHIZZ

I added food colouring to mine to make mine pink and purple! The best way to do this is to use a skewer, dip it into the food colouring, then carefully drop the colouring into your frosting mixture. This avoids the terrible 'I've accidentally tipped too much colouring in now have freakishly bright red frosting' incidents. An old school tip from 70's Home Economics teachers, imparted to me by my dear old Mum. Wise advice indeed!

I used a piping bag to pipe my frosting on to my cupcakes. It didn't really help that my Mum managed to split it so I ended up with my hands covered, but that's somewhat by the by ;)

Decorations

Morrisons Pink Glitter Sugar

Morrisons White Chocolate Stars

Morrisons Cupcake Cases - they do polka dot ones too!

Conclusion: A truly messy affair, but very fun indeed. My creations didn't look anything as spectacular as Milly's, but I aim to get there one day!

What do you think? Do you have any cupcake baking wisdom to share? If you have any questions, ask away :)