Recipe | Piñata cupcakes using condensed milk

Fun colourful cupcakes with a surprise sweetie centre made using condensed milk.

Recently I made flapjacks using a recipe which only required half a tin of condensed milk. I wondered if I could use up the rest of the tin by making cake. Unsurprisingly there are lots of condensed milk recipes on the Carnation website, where I got this recipe for piñata cupcakes.

The resulting sponge is light, fluffy and delicious. I’ll definitely be making these again!

Ingredients (makes 12 piñata cupcakes)

125 g / 4.5 oz plain flour
200 g / 7 oz condensed milk (half the normal-sized tin)
1 egg
85 g / 3 oz butter or margarine
1.5 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp vanilla extract

For the filling and icing:

100 g / 3.5 oz butter or margarine
200g / 7 oz icing sugar
Food colouring of your choice (gel food colouring better, but liquid will work fine)
Mini-smarties, sprinkles… mini sweets of your choice!

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C (160 for fan ovens) / 350 degrees F / Gas Mark 4.

Put 12 cupcakes into a bun or muffin tin.

Using an electric stand mixer or hand whisk, beat together the butter and condensed milk. Add the egg and beat in before finally adding the vanilla essence, baking powder and flour. Mix until combined. Spoon the piñata cupcake mixture into the cupcake cases.

Bake for 15-20 minutes until the piñata cupcakes are golden brown and a knife or toothpick inserted into the middle of one comes out clean. Leave them to cool in the tin.

Make your buttercream. Beat together the butter and icing sugar – if using an electric mixer remember to use a cover or go slowly so you don’t create a white cloud. Divide your buttercream into two or three, depending on how many colours you want. Add drops of colouring to the buttercream, stirring and adding more colouring until you get the shade of icing you want. I used the original colour (which is pale cream), yellow and orange.

Now prepare the sweet centres of the piñata cupcakes. Cut out a circular piece from the centre of each cupcake, cutting at least an inch (2.5 cm) deep but not so deep you cut to the bottom of the cake. A picture is better than words for this bit:

I cut the shape out and used a small spoon to scoop out the “cap” of sponge. Cut about a centimetre off the base of these caps and set them next the each cupcake (you’ll need to put them back in).

Now put some mini-Smarties and sprinkles (or any hard sugar sweets of your choice) into each piñata cupcake. Pop the cake “caps” back into the cupcakes, covering the sweets.

Spoon your coloured buttercream into a piping bag fitted with a large star tip. Pipe a swirl of buttercream onto the centre of each piñata cupcake, covering the cut marks.