Since it is National Cupcake Week I thought I would share my latest creation! Recently I have been doing a lot of baking and experimenting with piping, colours and flavours. So I thought I would share my rainbow loveliness and quite frankly, these cupcakes are my favourite so far! I am always a bit afraid of flavours and normally like to stick with vanilla because it's yummy and reliable, however, this time I decided to go with lemon cupcakes and rainbow butter icing!
Preheat your oven to 170 degrees celsius!
For the Cupcakes:
Add the caster sugar, sifted self-raising flour, 2 large eggs and unsalted butter (at room temperature) to your mixing bowl and whisk until all together. Add the bicarbonate of soda, milk and lemon juice to your bowl and mix until combined, light and soft. With the lemon zest, use a grater and grate the lemon skin down until the centre of the lemon appears. The reason we use zest is because the flavour is a lot more powerful than the juice alone and will be much more effective in creating a much more lemony taste.
Lay out your cupcake cases in your tray and add a spoonful of mix to each, evenly spreading the mixture and filling the cases about 3/4 of the way up. Once this is done, put them into the preheated oven! Now with a good oven that is not old and well used like mine, these cupcakes should bake within 20 minutes. However, for me they took about 30-40 minutes with me checking them every 5-10 minutes after the 20 minute period. So as long as they are golden brown on top and spring to the touch, they should be done! Another tip to check is to get a small knife or metal stick and push this to the bottom of the cake and out again (don't worry, this will be covered by icing). When it comes out the knife should be clean, if mixture comes out, keep cooking!
Once baked, take the cupcakes out of the tray and leave on a cooling tray, DO NOT ice the cupcakes until they are completely cool otherwise the buttercream will just melt off and look rubbish!
For the Buttercream:
Take the room temperature unsalted butter and whisk for about 5 minutes until the butter is light in colour and creamy in texture. Add the sifted icing sugar to the mix, a small amount at a time, mixing in between. Once the icing sugar is combined, add the vanilla extract and 1-2 tablespoons of milk. The amount of milk will depend on the texture, it needs to be soft enough to be able to pipe with so add one and see how is looks then add another if needed.
Once mixed, split the mixture into 3 small bowls and add your chosen colours. I used green, pink and blue for my cakes but any colouring combination will be fab! Once this is done, prepare your piping bag by cutting the bottom to the correct size and putting the nozzle in (you can choose any nozzle you like but I used a star nozzle). Open the piping bag and add one colour and a time. One to the right of the bag, one colour to the left and the third one top, trying to keep them as separated as possible (this will get messy but power through!). Close the top of the bag and start piping, at first only two colours may come out but give it a minute and off you go, rainbow galore!
Enjoy!
The Cupcake Recipe: This recipe should bake 12 cupcakes
Buttercream:
335g icing sugar
150g unsalted butter
1- 2 tablespoons of whole milk
¼ teaspoon of vanilla extract
Equipment:
Whisker
Mixing Bowl
Spoons
Bowls for splitting the rainbow buttercream
Cupcake cases
Cupcake baking tray
An Oven!
Cooling tray (or a plate is just fine!)
Piping bags
Piping nozzle
Recipe:
Pre-Heat the oven to 170 degrees celsius and bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown :)
The Cupcake Recipe: This recipe should bake 12 cupcakes
125g caster sugar
125g self-raising flour
2 large free range eggs
125g unsalted butter
¼ teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
1 ½ tablespoons of milk
125g self-raising flour
2 large free range eggs
125g unsalted butter
¼ teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
1 ½ tablespoons of milk
1 whole lemon and lemon zest (as much as you can get)
Buttercream:
335g icing sugar
150g unsalted butter
1- 2 tablespoons of whole milk
¼ teaspoon of vanilla extract
3 colourings of your choice for the buttercream icing, I chose green, pink and blue!
