Basic Cupcake Recipe

At last, a non-gingerbread recipe! Welcome to the wonderful world of cupcakes.

The beauty of this cupcake recipe is that you can use it to make fairy/butterfly cupcakes, as well as ones with icing.

You could also add in berries, white chocolate, (white chocolate AND berries), anything your heart desires, really!

Now, run down to the supermarket, get yourself the following ingredients, pop on your chefs hat, and let's begin!

Cupcake Ingredients:

• 120g butter
• ½ cup of caster sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 2 decently sized eggs
• 1 ½ cups self raising flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ½ cup of milk

(makes 12-ish cupcakes)

Buttercream Icing:

• 200g butter
• Icing sugar (I just keep adding it until it tastes decent)
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• Food colouring if you are so inclined

Or

Philadelphia Cream Cheese Icing:

• I packet of Philadelphia cream cheese
• Icing sugar (I just keep adding it until it tastes decent)
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• Food colouring (if you like)
• 50 g butter

Or

For Fairy cupcakes:

• Thickened cream
• Icing sugar
• Strawberries

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius

Mix the sugar, butter and vanilla essence in a bowl, hopefully with an electric beater, or you are in for a bit of a challenge (however you will feel very ye old days, which might be satisfying), until they are thoroughly combined.

Add in the eggs and then slowly add in the milk and flour (which you will have sifted).

Line your cupcake tray/pan thingy with cupcake containers (not sure of the technical term here) and evenly distribute the mix. If you don’t have a cupcake tray thing, you could always try putting the cupcake containers on a normal tray, and hope for the best (I did try this at Ola’s place once, and it worked) – just make sure you use two containers for each cupcake to be sure.

Leave in the oven for about 15 minutes.

Once cooked, wait until the cupcakes have cooled to ice.

For fairy cupcakes:
Slice the top off, and cut this part in half for the ‘wings’
Place a tablespoon of cream (which you will have whipped earlier on) on top. Then place the ‘wings’ in a wing like fashion on top of the cream. After this, sift a little icing sugar over the whole cupcake to create an air of fairyness, and then add a sliver of strawberry to the top.

For butter icing cupcakes:
Make sure the butter is rather soft, and then use an electric beater to combine it with the icing sugar – sift ½ a cup at a time – you will probably need at least 2 cups of icing sugar, if not 3, but taste it along the way to see. Then mix in the food colouring if you are so inclined (but remember, you only need the tiniest drop, or you might end up with tangerine coloured cupcakes, like me)

From past experience, blue cupcakes are not very appetising (although highly entertaining) to look at, but will probably be a big hit at a children’s birthday party. I thoughtfully inflicted these on my mother as a child, generally while making the cupcakes themselves green, which goes quite well with blue (or even red) icing. She seemed to love them...

For Philadelphia Cream Cheese Icing:
Follow the butter icing recipe above, however begin by first combining the cream cheese with the 50g of butter before adding in the icing sugar and food colouring.

I then just use an icing bag to pipe the softened icing onto the cupcakes, and there you have it. The cupcakes pictured here are using the Philadelphia cream cheese icing.


Now all you need to do is make a pot of tea, invite some friends over, and indulge!