Saturday, May 5, 2012

Swirly Cupcakes

 
 
I have got SO many compliments about these cakes, because they are very pretty and they taste really good!

 
I've started to whisk the batter and the icing with an electric whisk, which makes them both really light and airy.
For these cakes, I used the recipe from my Vanilla Cupcakes post and the icing from my How to make the perfect butter icing.
The icing is the same recipe/proportions, but there is more!

Recipe:
For the cake:
- 125g butter
- 125 g caster sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 150g plain flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- Food colouring of your choice

For the icing:
- 150g butter
- 250g icing sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- Food colouring of your choice

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
2. Cream the butter until it is pale and fluffy. I have started doing this with an electric whisk, because it goes very pale and very fluffy very quickly! You can do this manually, and see how I do it here. Add the sugar and whisk it again.
3. Add the vanilla extract and one egg, mix well, then add the other egg and mix again.
4. Sift the flour and baking powder into the bowl, then gently mix them into the batter. DO NOT turn the whisk on!! The flour will fly everywhere! Either mix it with a spoon then whisk it, or keep the whisk turned off and mix it. *
5. Spoon the mixture into 12 cupcake cases, and bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes.
6. When the cakes, have finished baking, take them out of the oven and leave them to cool.

7. For the icing, whisk the butter until it is light and fluffy.
8. Gradually mix the icing sugar into the butter (don't turn the electric whisk on!!), then add the vanilla extract.
9. When the cakes are completely cooled, either spread the icing on or pipe it on to the cupcakes.

* For the blue and the pink cupcakes, at stage 4 add a little bit of food colouring (if its a paste, then 1/8-1/4 tsp, if its liquid, 1-2 drops), and half mix it in, so that it creates a swirled and marbled effect.

For the two-toned pink cupcakes:
- When you have made the icing, add half of the icing to a different bowl. 
- Add food colouring to one half (or do different colours on each half).
- Spoon the icing into a piping bag, but put the plain icing on one side, and the coloured icing on the other side. Then pipe the icing as usual.


For the blue cupcakes:
- Make the icing as usual, you can choose if you want to colour the icing or not. I coloured mine slightly, to make the icing pale blue.
- This is the tricky part! You need a paste food colouring here, not a liquid one. You will need to dip a toothpick into the colouring, and draw a straight line up each side of the piping bag. Its hard to get your hand far enough into the bag and not get it covered in colouring! I failed miserable at this and I have very blue hands!
- Then put the icing into the piping bag as usual and ice away! You probably want to pipe a bit of the icing back into the bowl, until the darker lines show up.




How cute is this box? My friend Vicky got it for me from Poundland :)
Thank you Vicky!

Zoe x

1 comment:

  1. Yummy, they look so good! If I didn't have exams I'd be making these right now.

    ReplyDelete

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