Nom nom nom...

Mr Lollipop has gone swimming with his family. Since I haven't seen the inside of a swimming pool since 1998, I gave it a miss. Everyone is coming back here afterwards though - and by everyone I mean everyone : Mr Lollipop's parents, Mr Lollipop's brother and his two little boys, and Mr Lollipop's sister, her fiance and their baby girl. They live about 70 miles away, so we don't get to see them often and the last time was Christmas.

Last night we decided to make some cupcakes for their visit. I love cupcakes - they're so cute and yummy scrummy! We made a batch of vanilla cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery book, and we frosted them with some pink vanilla frosting and multicoloured sugar sprinkles. Yum! I'm resisting every urge to taste one, because once I start I won't stop!

We used muffin cases as the book suggests, but ideally we should have doubled the mixture so that the cakes filled the cases. If you like a lot of frosting, definitely double the quantities - we just about managed to cover our cakes by multiplying the frosting quantities by 1.5!

The recipe for 12 cupcakes (or technically muffins) is:

Ingredients
120g plain flour
140g caster sugar
1 and 1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
40g unsalted butter at room temperature
120ml milk (the book says to use whole but we always use semi-skimmed and can never tell the difference)
1 egg

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Frosting
250g icing sugar sifted
80g unsalted butter at room temperature
25ml milk
A couple of drops of vanilla extract
A couple of drops of food colouring (Optional - We used red for pink frosting)

Method
1. Line muffin tray with paper cases and preheat oven to 170C.

2. The book says to mix all the dry ingredients with butter, but that makes one heck of a mess. I find it easier to cream the sugar and butter then mix in the flour, baking powder and salt.

3. Gradually pour in half the milk and beat until the milk is just incorporated.

4. Whisk the egg, vanilla and remaining milk together in a separate bowl and then pour into the flour mixture. Continue mixing for a couple of minutes until the mixture is smooth. It will be quite runny, not like normal cake mixture. Don't be alarmed - that's how it's suppsed to look!

5. Spoon the mixture into the paper cases but only fill them two thirds full. Bake in the oven for 25 mins or until slightly golden (ours took about 18 minutes in a fan assisted oven, so after about 15 minutes watch them carefully so they don't get ruined!) and then cool on a wire rack.

6. Beat the icing sugar and butter together until well mixed.

7. In a separate bowl combine the milk, vanilla extract and food colouring then add to the butter mixture gradually. Continue to beat until the frosting is light and fluffy.

8. Decorate the cupcakes with the frosting once cool. Add whatever pretty decorations you choose. We used sugar strands. Yum!

You can use normal cupcake cases aswell. This makes about 18 cakes using cupcake cases, and you need to reduce the cooking time. I should imagine they'd only take about 12 minutes in my oven, so make sure you keep an eye on them!

My Granny took one home with her last night and she just phoned me to say it was delicious, so it passed the taste-test too. I can't wait to try one.

Have you got any yummy cupcake recipes for me to try?

xoxo