Saturday 4 May 2013

Cupcakes!


Hey readers! It’s been a while since I last posted anything about baking, and seeing as I’ve been doing quite a lot of that lately, I thought I should put this up. I decided to bake something for my last day in music before the exams and I realised that I should probably make a variety of things. But, I didn’t really want to end up baking batches upon batches of different bakery items so I figured that making a few cupcakes would be my best option. So, I googled a plain cupcake recipe and edited a few things. I doubled the ingredients and then added a few extras. What I ended up with was six plain cupcakes, six with chocolate cream icing, nine with a chocolate centre and three with a chocolate centre and chocolate cream icing. Ok, so not that varied but they catered to everyone’s taste and it proves that you can take a plain recipe and do whatever you want with it. So, here’s the recipe! It should make around 24 cupcakes…
 
 

Ingredients:

·         250g butter softened

·         250g caster sugar

·         4 med eggs

·         250g self raising flour

·         Splash of milk

·         1tsp baking powder

·         1tsp vanilla essence

·         Chocolate spread (I used plain cheap stuff but feel free to use nutella or whatever else you may prefer)  

Utensils:

·         Seive

·         Large mixing bowl

·         Small mixing bowl

·         Glass bowl

·         Small sauce pan

·         Electric whisk (I didn’t use one and the recipe takes up a lot of time and effort if you don’t have one, but if like me you prefer baking without an electric whisk you’ll need a wooden spoon and a fork)

·         Set of Scales

·         Set of measuring spoons + teaspoons!

·         Cupcake cases
 

Method:

1.       Pre-heat the oven to 190c or gas mark 5

2.       Cream the butter and sugar together in the large mixing bowl

3.       In the smaller mixing bowl whisk the eggs and add the vanilla essence

4.       Sieve the flour and baking powder into the butter mixture

5.       Fold in the eggs and add the milk
 
 
 

6.       Spoon in the amount of mixture you want to use for plain cupcakes into the cupcake cases

7.       For chocolate middle cupcakes add one teaspoon of mixture to case then make a hollow in mixture

8.       Next add a teaspoon of chocolate spread and cover with another teaspoon of cupcake mixture making sure that no chocolate spread is left visible

9.       Put cakes into oven for 10-12 minutes.

10.   When done, leave to cool for a bit before transferring them to a wire cooling rack.

 
For the Icing:

I found a recipe for the cream icing in a cookery book I own and halved it. Feel free to use the normal amounts if you want to ice all of your cupcakes…here’s my version:

1.       100g of whatever kind of chocolate you like

2.       100ml of double cream (a good low fat alternative is Elmlea) 

Method:

1.       Break chocolate into chunks and add to the bowl and melt them over a pan of simmering water

2.       Take bowl off heat and let the chocolate cool for about 5 minutes


3.       Stir in cream and leave in the fridge for a further 5 minutes to thicken the mixture

4.       Ice your cupcakes! (but make sure the cakes are completely cooled first. My advice would be to stick them in the fridge for a while)
 

I’m happy to say that the cakes went down really well! I turned up at school with three tubs full and came home with the tubs completely empty. By the way, the chocolate spread cakes taste amazing when they’ve just come out of the oven because the chocolate spread in the centre is melted and sooo good. My advice is to leave a few of the chocolate spread cupcakes un-iced because you can pop them in the microwave later on to warm them up so that the chocolate spread goes runny again.
It'd be great to get some feedback on what you guys think of the recipe, and hopefully I'll have some more for you later on!

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