BAKING | Simple vanilla cupcakes

I really love baking on lazy days and today being one of those days, I decided to make some really simple vanilla cupcakes for my friend's birthday and thought I would show you how to make them because they're so easy and taste delicious!!

INGREDIENTS

• 110g self raising flour
• 110g softened butter or margerine
• 110g golden caster sugar
• 2 medium free range eggs
• 1tsp of vanilla essence
• 1tbsp of milk

 METHOD

1. Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 4 and fill a cake tin with any cupcake cases of your choice.  I used a couple muffin cases to make bigger cakes, as well as 8 smaller cupcake cases - the ingredients make up to 12 standard sized cakes.

2. Cream butter and sugar together until the mixture looks like the photo below.  It's a lot easier if you use room temp. butter!

3.  Beat in the two eggs (avoiding all the egg shell!!) followed by folding in the flour bit by bit.  If the mixture looks lumpy then add a bit of milk until the mixture is of a dropping consistency.  Then you can add the vanilla extract - I used Madagascan vanilla which is much thicker and sweeter, you can use whatever extract you want.  I used a spoon smaller than a tea spoon and put two of those in.

4.  Now you can spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases.  To do it equally, I just use a tablespoon and half fill the cases.  To make these cakes a little different, I melted some milk chocolate over boiling water and spooned a little into each cake and swirled it around to create a marble effect (pictured below).  Bake for around 10-15 minutes or until golden brown.  I check the cases by putting a knife in them, and if it comes out almost clean, I take them out; the cakes are so hot that they keep cooking once they're out the oven, so you don't want to dry them out.

5.  Once the cakes are completely cool, you can decorate them!  You can use anything from royal icing to a simple sprinkle of icing sugar.  I used a basic buttercream using 50g of softened butter, 100g of icing sugar and half a tube of purple food colouring gel.

6.  To make the buttercream, I cream the butter until pale then gradually sift in the icing sugar until thick and you can create stiff, self-holding peaks.  I added quite a bit of food colouring to make the icing colourful - with the gel, you would need to use the whole tube to get it really bold.

7.  Using a piping bag, I piped on the icing to the four larger cakes and used some pre-made chocolate fudge icing on the others because it's the only stuff my sister eats..  I also added mini white chocolate stars, mini white pearls and silver balls!  You can add anything you want to fit any occassion or personal taste.

These cakes are the easiest to make, you don't really have to think about what you're doing because it's difficult to make a mistake.  You can make them look really fun or formal.  I didn't get this recipie from anywhere, it's just how I've always made them!
Do you have any cupcake recipies?

Thanks for reading!
XXX



*All photos are my own unless stated otherwise
*I was not paid or sponsored to write this post