Friday 30 December 2011

Christmas Cupcakes

I decided to take an old recipe I have for vanilla cupcakes and adapt it to make it Christmassy. I replaced the vanilla with cinnamon, ginger and mixed spice to give it that warm Christmas flavour. Continuing the Christmas flavour theme I replaced the vanilla essence in the buttercream with orange extract. I find a lot of Christmas food to be quite heavy, but these had an excellent amount of Christmas flavour and were light too. I made 28 cupcakes with the quantities below and so I put some in boxes and gave them as gifts to my family. 



Ingredients:
375 g plain white flour                                  1 teaspoon baking powder
115g softened butter                                     200g caster sugar
3 eggs                                                         175ml milk
3 teaspoons cinnamon                                  3 teaspoons ground ginger
3 teaspoons mixed spice

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees centigrade. Line a muffin pan with fluted cases.
2. Sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger and mixed spice.
3. Put butter and caster sugar in a large bowl and whisk until light and fluffy .
4. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Using a large metals poon fold in the flour mixture and then the milk.
5. Fill each baking cup with a dessert spoon of batter and bake in the oven for approximately 25 minutes and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
6. When cakes are cooled pipe on the orange buttercream icing.

Orange Buttercream Icing

Ingredients
175g softened butter                                     350g icing sugar
2 tablespoons milk                                          6 drops orange extract
Something festive to decorate with

Method
1. Beat the butter until light and fluffy and sift in the icing sugar then beat until smooth, adding milk and orange extract.