Naturally Healthy Parenting The parent's guide to a healthy family
I’ve been meaning to attempt cupcakes for a while; and eventually got round to it today. The aim was to make vanilla cupcakes with a chocolate topping!
After seeing some people’s entries to the Rangecookers cupcake making competition online, I decided to try my hand and give it a go and enter myself. I based my cupcakes on this recipe from allrecipes.co.uk.
Matt always gets in the way when I’m baking, so I sent him to Tesco to get some supplies and told him to leave me alone for a bit while I got cooking. Here’s the ingredients I used:
Ingredients:
1. 300 ml milk
2. 2.5 teaspoons of baking powder
3. 0.5 teaspoon of salt
4. 170 grams of unsalted butter, preferably at room temperature
5. 375 grams of flour
6. 350 grams of caster sugar
7. 3 eggs, again preferably at room temperature
8. 1 tbsp vanilla extract for the flavor
For the chocolate frosting:
1. 170 grams of caster sugar
2. 900 grams of sieved icing sugar
3. Around 80 ml milk
4. 50 grams of cocoa powder, preferably, unsweetened
5. 2 tbsp vanilla extract
6. Some more milk, in case the need arises
I also told him to get some cake sprinkles to top it off.
How I made them…
1. It took about 50 mins to make these – 40 mins to prepare the batter and 10 mins to cook and bake the cakes.
2. Heated the oven to 190 degrees, and lined the muffin casings.
3. Sieve the salt, flour and baking powder into a bowl.
4. Next, I beat the sugar and the cream well. I kept adding each egg one at a time; beat until the batter was nice and fluffy. Finally, I added the vanilla essence.
5. Then, I added a mix of flour and milk to the existing batter. To get the cakes soft, I beat this mixture well.
6. Finally, poured the mixture into the greased containers and baked in the over for 10 to 15 minutes. They were left on the side cool down – this is where Matt tried to get his grubby hands on them.
How to make the frosting?
Beat the butter and cocoa powder together nicely. Add the icing sugar to the resulting concoction. Further on add the milk along with the vanilla essence to the mixture of sugar, butter and cocoa powder. Mix well for even consistency. Once you have the right fluidity, you can set aside the mixture and wait for the cupcakess to cool down. If you want a little thinner frosting, you can use a little more milk.
Once the cupcakes have nicely cooled down, you can use the frosting to decorate the cup cakes. You can add the sugar sprinkles as toppings, in case you want to decorate the cupcakes further. Try this simple recipe at home and see how you delight your family with some ravishing, chocolate icing cupcakes.
The end result (drum roll please!)
