So last week I was 25

I am no longer in my 'early twenties' and I'm pretty sure that I've gone up an age range in some of those surveys but haven't yet taken one so I don't know for sure. Anyway, I wanted to make a post about cupcakes as that is what I made. Some friends and I went to a Mexican restaurant (this was a bit of a hassle as they wanted a deposit and pre-order, but they cook everything fresh so it was worth it). For dessert I took two trays of cupcakes, as this avoids needing the chef to provide a knife/cut the cake. The first tray was chocolate with vanilla buttercream and the second was of vanilla cupcakes with a chocolate ganache frosting.

I took the cupcake recipes from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook. I haven't used this recipe before as, frankly, it looks a bit strange. It does, however, work extremely well!


For vanilla cupcakes (as I made them, with slightly less sugar than the original recipe):

120g plain flour
120g unrefined sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
40g unsalted butter (room temp)
120ml skimmed milk
1 egg
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

The recipe suggests you need one of those fancy Kitchen Aid stand mixers. Sadly I do not have one of those, so I improvised and used my hands.

Pre-heat the oven to 170 C.

1. Rub the butter into the dry ingredients, similar to if you were making a crumble. The book recommends you achieve a 'sandy' consistency, think 'play sand' from school/nursery.

2. Add half the milk and mix until combined. This will form a fairly stiff paste.

3. Lightly beat the egg, and mix with the milk and vanilla extract.

4. Add the remaining wet ingredients and mix until a smooth batter is formed. The batter will be slightly wet, but take care not to over-mix.

5. Fill cake cases until 2/3 full and bake for 20-25 minutes, until sponge is springy and golden.

The chocolate cupcakes follow the same recipe, although 20g of flour is substituted with cocoa powder.


Vanilla buttercream:

250g icing sugar
80g unsalted butter
25ml milk (the recipe calls for whole but I used skimmed)
2-3 drops vanilla extract

Combine the butter and sugar, add the milk and vanilla extract and beat well. I used an electric hand whisk, and found that adding the sugar little by little would probably have created less waste.


Chocolate ganache frosting:

200ml single cream
200g dark chocolate (I used Bournville as it is nice to cook with in this recipe)
250-500g icing sugar (the recipe called for 250g but I used quite a bit more)

Heat the cream to just below boiling and pour onto the chopped chocolate. Stir until melted. Stir in 250g icing sugar and whisk well (again, I used an electric hand mixer). Place in the fridge and allow to cool for a couple of hours. After a couple of hours the frosting was still not firm enough to pipe, so I whisked in icing sugar until it held form on a spatula.

Pipe the frosting on to the cakes using a large 'star' nozzle and sprinkle with white chocolate stars (available in Sainsbury's). I find that disposable piping bags are the best as you can just put all of the mess in the bin. The 'swirl' seen on many cupcakes is achieved by piping in decreasing circles. To finish, stop squeezing the bag and depress the nozzle into the icing.

These cakes went down very well, and looked gorgeous. Sadly I didn't take pictures so might have to make them again sometime!