So, this Sunday, I decided to get back into baking… and back into my blog.
Being back home last week during my week off work, I baked a lot, and it made me realise how much I’ve missed the simple pleasure of creating something yummy!
As it’s Hallowe’en tomorrow, my theme for today’s cupcakes was scary. I went for a spider decoration, because let’s face it, spiders are pretty scary things.
The cakes themselves are just a really basic cupcake mix –
120g Stork (any margarine would do)
120g self-raising flour
120g caster sugar
2 eggs
Mixed with a hand mixer (my style is lazy) and baked at 180C for 10-15 minutes. For the icing, I did a really basic buttercream icing:
Beat 115g butter until fluffy
Sift in 175g icing sugar and beat until smooth
Then I started adding an inordinate amount of food colouring in an attempt to reach an orange shade. I had failed to find orange food colouring in Tesco but found red and yellow. I added a bit of both and eventually reached somewhere near orange, although it would have been a lot easier if I’d had damn orange to begin with.
When I ice my cakes, I like to just spoon it on then kind of swirl it around on top, but you may prefer to pipe it. I then added fruit pastilles for the spider bodies and piped on their legs with shop-bought black writing icing. Easy!
I then moved on to my next bake: raspberry and white chocolate muffins. The white chocolate was added at the request of my boyfriend who adores it, and white chocolate chips seemed strangely expensive so I just bought a packet of Tesco’s own kids white chocolate buttons for about 40p and they seemed to turn out fine. However, if you’re making them for a present I’d tend to recommend buying better quality chocolate. For my basic muffin needs, cheap chocolate is just fine!
I also used frozen raspberries – again, cheaper than ‘fresh’ ones, and probably better at this time of year anyway.
You will need:
200g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
75g caster sugar
1 egg, beaten
175 milk
125g butter, melted and then cooled (I forgot to cool and this led to panic mid-bake.)
175g raspberries
handful of choc chips/buttons – white or plain
1. Preheat oven to 190C. Line a muffin tin with 12 cases, although I only managed to get 11 but I didn’t divide evenly. Sift flour, baking powder and sugar into a bowl and stir.
2. Whisk the egg with the milk and the cooled, melted butter and stir into the bowl with the flour mixture. Then fold in the raspberries and your chocolate chips (or leave out the chocolate if you’re feeling puritanical)
3. Divide the mixture between the baking cases and bake for 20-25 mins until they have risen, are golden and smell divine.
Result: satisfied me.
What Katie Says 