Pimms Cupcakes - A summery treat!

I saw this recipe last year and have wanted to make it for ages. After reading about them again on CrazycupcakeGem I decided to make them for a friends BBQ. 

Pimms on sunny day what could be better!

The icing is so exciting on these cupcakes. It's four types; strawberry, mint, orange and cucumber. Cucumber?! I know but it works. It is a true Pimms experience.

The Pimms is so great in the cupcake as well, the sponge is rich and moist and you can really taste the spice and warmness of the Pimms.

The weather has been truely strange as of late, but it is suppose to be summer so I say do all things summery. Wear sandals in the rain, bare your pale winter legs and eat Pimms!

The recipe can be found here.

The piping is the tricky part. You need to get all four buttercreams in to one piping bag. I find the easiest way to do this is to build them up. Start with a spoonful of each buttercream in the bottom of the piping bag being careful to keep each type in it's quarter. Repeat this a spoonful at a time, twisting the bag to keep each buttercream in it's quarter of the bag. Squeeze the first bit out into a bowl to check you have the four stripes and then pipe away. As you can see my four stripes are perfect so don't worry too much, It stills tastes great.

I sprinkled my cupcakes with my new favourite cupcake accessory - freeze dried strawberries. I also topped the first batch with a quarter slice of a lemon but I noticed everybody picked these off so for the second round I used sugared lemons. However, I find these too sweet so it's a toss up! I think the fresh lemon leaves a little taste of lemon on the top of the buttercream which is nice.

I'm off to Malta on Monday and am really excited. Hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Cake fairy x

Guinness and Baileys Cupcakes

This post is slightly late in coming! I made these for St Patricks Day.

The boy's mum bumped in to a friend of ours and mentioned to them that her and the boy's dad were coming over to our house for St Paddy's Day lunch. She also mentioned that I was going to make St Paddy's day cupcakes, to which they replied "Oh they'll probably just be green".

She thought "I doubt it" and she was right!

I made Guinness and Baileys cupcakes. You'll have to forgive me but I thought this was a really original idea and I had come up with it all by myself. A little gooogling later, I discovered everyone and their aunt was making them!

Either way they were delicious.

I followed this recipe for the Guinness cakes by Dave Leiberman.

I originally thought I would make a Baileys cream to top them with because I had forgotten how "not sweet" the cakes were. After a quick nibble, to check they weren't posioned, I decided a sweet buttercream would be better.

I  used this recipe for the Baileys buttercream from Tide and Thyme.

As you can see I topped them with a swirl, however, not just any swirl an Ateco piping tip swirl!  I have been on the hunt for a large piping tip forever, I like the Wilton 1M but I would like it to be a bit bigger. After goggling, because I'm obsessive like that, I heard mention of Ateco but apparently you can only get them in the US and Australia. My excitment when I found them on a trip to Nottingham was immense. Haha.

I top them with a fondant "Shamrock". It's not quite a shamrock but this is the only cutter I had and I didn't fancy cutting them all by hand, I think you get the general idea.

The boys mum and dad seemed to like them. The boys dad even asked for seconds.

The sponge is a rich chocolate with a hint of an oaky stout flavour which I think makes the chocolate flavour deeper and the icing is creamy, boozy delicious-ness.

You can definately have these anytime of year - but just for grown ups!

Happy baking.

Nutella Cupcake with Nutella Marscapone Buttercream

These cupcakes are called self frosting as they have a dollop of nutella added to them which acts as a frosting but you know me I can't be doing with no frosting so I had to make some as well.

I made these with the boys little bro when he was over visiting from Japan ( We are going to see him out there in two weeks - super excited!). We had him over for dinner and trust me to ask my guest to make his own dessert!

The batter is quite a simple vanilla batter but, the exciting part, you add a dollop of nutella to each one after you have put them in to the case.

You then bake. Some of the nutella sinks in so you have a soft fondant centre and some stays on the top for the cute marbled effect.

Even thought nutella is delicious sometimes I find it can be a bit dry so I wanted to make the buttercream a bit creamy to counteract the dryness so I went for a buttercream with marscapone. Delicious, chocolately but creamy light! 

Nutella Cupcakes

Recipe can be found on allrecipes.com

Nutella Marscapone Buttercream

Recipe can be found on http://piccantedolce.blogspot.com/

Great combination, even if I do say so myself, finished off with a small swirl and large chocolate button.

Highly recommend for someone who loves chocolate but is maybe looking for something not too rich. I also think these would be really fun to make with kids.

Happy Baking x

Caramel Cupcakes

Did everyone enjoy the sport relief bake off? I certainly did. 

I sat on the edge of my seat when Anita couldn't get the millionaires short bread of out the tin. 5 mins before I was shouting "line the tin, line the tin!" at the screen.

I chuckled as Angela went slightly manic and started speaking really fast, then breathed a sigh of relief that all her fondant diasys all lined up.

AND I loved seeing last years gbbo contestants in the first episode!

Well done to the winner Anita, her mad hatter cake was fab.

I've been baking mad this week for three reasons. One because of sport relief bake off, two because I had a long hard week at work and needed some baking to cheer me up and three I got a new free standing mixer. 

Whoop, no more hand mixer for me. You can turn it on and walk away!

I baked up a storm on Friday with these caramel cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery Book Cake Days. I am so pleased with these cupcakes! The cake is fluffy yet moist with a mild yet consistent caramel taste. The buttercream is airy and not too rich. Perfect with a cup of tea or for dessert.

Caramel Cupcakes

80g unsalted butter (much be soft!)
280g golden sugar
240g plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
pinch of salt
240ml milk
1/4 tsp vanilla bean paste
2 eggs
160g carnation caramel

1. Preheat your oven to 190C and out a shelf in the middle of the oven. Line your muffin tin with muffin cases.
2. Using an electric whisk, whisk up the butter then add flour, salt, baking powder and sugar. When this has been whisked it should resemble bread crumbs.
3. Whisk up your eggs, milk and vanilla bean paste and our in to the "breadcrumb" mixture.
4. Whisk until combined then add the caramel and again whisk until combined. Try not to over whisk as you won't get rounded tops.
5. Fill your muffin cases up two thirds. I use a jug for this as the mixture is fairly runny.
6. Bake for 18 mins or until a skewer come out clean.

Caramel Buttercream 

500g icing sugar (sounds like a lot but it does work!)
160 butter (must be soft too)
50ml milk
100g carnation caramel

1. Using an electric whisk, whisk together the icing sugar and butter until it again reaches a breadcrumb consistency.
2. Whisk in the milk and caramel. Whisk for ages until it's beautifully fluffy.

Definitely a recipe to be repeated, Delicious.

You can see a sneak preview of my "stained glass windows stars" on top too. Happy Baking!