royal wedding cupcakes.

shopping list

for the cupcakes
♥ 130g self raising flour
♥ 130g caster sugar♥ 130g unsalted butter
♥ two eggs♥ one teaspoon of vanilla extract♥ two teaspoons of milk
♥ paper or silicon cupcake cases
makes twelve cakes

for the topping
♥ 120g butter
♥ 250g icing sugar
♥ a splash of milk♥ silver balls
♥ food colouring
♥ decorations, fruit, flags, well whatever you like

preheat the oven to 200 degrees, and line a cake tray with the cases. next is the part where you find out cupcakes are far more easy to make than you may have previously thought. i'm only just getting into baking and i was pleasantly surprised :)

you quite literally put all the ingredients except the eggs, milk and vanilla extract in together. though it works well if you put in the flour last, and gradually. combine the mixture with a blender, whisk, or, if you studied at hogwarts, your wand.

beat in the eggs one by one. and then lastly the
spash of milk and extract of vanilla.
note: do not be tempted to try a bit of vanilla extract
thinking it will taste like a mouthful of premium icecream.
it won't.

spoon the mixture into the cases and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes, checking the cakes are golden.

a good tip for testing if they are ready is spiking a skewer into the cake and if it comes out dry and with no sponge stuck to it, it is ready. remember to remove before putting them back in the oven. we do not want sponge kebabs.

allow to cool on a rack once ready ready for the next, and very exciting, part, the decorating. i personally followed the beebs method for basic buttericing but changed the ratio to suit this particular recipe.

similarly you could change whatever you decorate the cupcakes with. add chocolate? nuts? flaked coconut? coloured sprinkles? seeing as of course, to make these for the royal wedding is perhaps a bit late now. though there's always pippa and harry? sigh.

i used pink colour food colouring for the, well, pink icing and arranged silver balls in union jack and W and K formations. rather fiddly i'm afraid. i had also hoped to use the blueberries to make a natural blue food colouring (not just because the supermarkets had sold out of blue food colouring, ahem). but blueberry juice isn't actually blue.

who knew?