Orange and Vanilla Bean Cupcakes

I saw these really pretty cupcakes a while a go and thought the flavour combination sounded yummy. I was right!

These are nice and fresh. The creamy vanilla beans perfectly goes with the tangy orange.

Recipe

You can find the recipe over at Annie's Eats here.

You know how much I love easy and effective cupcake toppers and I especially like ones you can eat. As you can see I candied some oranges for this recipes. This was the first time I have candied anything (I'm sure I say that in every post) it was surprisingly easy. Annie details exactly how to do it in her post. I used a whole orange and had to cut the pieces in to quarters. Annie candied a smaller tangerine so one ring covered the cupcake - In future I would go with this idea but I only had oranges, it's so much cuter to have a whole slice. 

This is my entry for Tea Time Treats this month. The theme is Summer Fairs & Fetes and Cake Stall Cakes and Bakes and it's being hosted by the lovely Karen from Lavender and Lovage. Sadly I have no summer fair to sell these at (really wish more were held in London!) but I think they would be a fab treat if I did!

I don't mean to sound so English but the weather really is awful here! I just got back from Malta and it was beautiful. I can't recommend it enough for everyone, all ages and interests! I yhought I'd share some holiday snaps (possibly too many but it was hard to choose) with you, just to remind us UKer's that the sun does exist! 

Happy Baking x

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