Another experiment which went a bit sideways thanks to a lack of colouring (again! just like the red velvet cake fiasco) and one of the hottest days of the year here in the UK!
Ingredients and method (makes 12 cupcakes)
- 150 g butter/margarine
- 150 g caster sugar
- 3 eggs
- 150 g self-raising flour
- 3 level teaspoons baking powder
- 1 tsp vanilla essence (or more if you want a stronger flavour)
Mix all the ingredients together until you get a smooth mixture. Spoon into 12 cupcake cases and bake at 180 degrees C for 20-25 minutes until golden brown or until you insert a knife into the centre of a cake and it comes out clean.
Decoration
Make your buttercream. I made far too much and have the extra in the fridge awaiting my next project! I think you should have enough with 100 g of butter/margarine and 200 g icing sugar. Once you’ve blended them together add a tablespoon of milk to make the buttercream easier to pipe.
You can add flavouring if you like. I didn’t, but split my mixture in two and added pink gel colouring to one half, and purple gel colouring to the other.
Then I used a teaspoon and a palette knife to put a small mound of buttercream on the cupcakes so that the final piping decoration would be raised at the centre.
I used a small star tip piping nozzle and put a scoop of both colours into the piping bag to get the colours to mix as I piped.
If you’d like to see a true pro-baker demonstrate the effect I was going for, please visit this YouTube video by Cakes by Lynz. 🙂
Art and Soul 
Wow, they looks great! 🙂
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Thank you. They were supposed to be a bit better – but that’s what comes from trying to use buttercream in a heatwave! 🙂
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This is so beautiful, your piping is superb! Definitely going to add this to my list of recipes to try!
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Thank you! I think it could have been better if I’d put the buttercream in the fridge for a while before piping. But for a first attempt, I was pleased. 🙂
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mmmm, these look yummy… I love the two tone effect in the piping 🙂
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Thank you. The original plan was two shades of purple, but I underestimated how much colouring I needed. It turned out ok in the end!
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Ooooh so pretty! I heard it was the hottest day ever in britain! Deff not butter icing weather, they look delish though!! 😀
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these are beautiful… I love your blog 🙂 x
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Thank you! That’s so nice of you to say 🙂 Will be making some cookies this week.
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Oh, yum! I think these look great, Claire! As a newbie food blogger on my A Cookable Feast blog, every recipe I post there feels like an experiment – and totally is in my case – so I can definitely relate to that feeling!
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Thanks. At least every time I learn something so hopefully I’m improving. I have dough for biscuits chilling at the moment… interested to see how that will turn out!
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