Making & decorating cakes is just as fun as eating them, don’t you think? This is my fav recipe, adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery. For some reason (perhaps because I haven’t used frosting), they’re not as sickly-sweet as the cupcakes they sell, but I like that. Enjoy!

You will need:
+ 120g plain flour
+ 140g caster sugar
+ 1½ teaspoons baking powder
+ A pinch of salt
+ 40g unsalted butter, at room temperature
+ 120ml whole milk
+ 1 egg
+ icing sugar
+ ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract (although I use flavouring & it’s fine)
+ food colourings of your choice
+ Hundreds and thousands or other edible sprinkles, to decorate
+ A 12-hole cupcake tray, lined with  paper cases (or if you’re using silicon cases like me, they’ll fine on a standard, flat baking tray)

Preheat your oven to 170°C / Gas Mark 3

Whisk up the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt & butter together with an electric mixer on a slow speed, until you get a sandy consistency. Be careful here, as I found with my new super-powerful whisk, that when you’re mixing dry ingredients, they will go everywhere if there’s no slow setting on your mixer! If this happens, just use a hand held whisk for a little while.

Gradually pour in half of the milk, until it’s all combined & looking lush! If you has to swap over to a hand held whisk, things should start to combine a little better now, for you & you should see less lumps.

Whisk the egg, vanilla extract / flavouring & remaining milk together in a separate bowl or jug, then pour into the flour mixture & continue beating until all the ingredients are incorporated & the mixture is smooth. Remember to scrape any unmixed flour from the side of the bowl with a rubber spatula or spoon.

I always find the consistency a little too runny, so feel free to use some more flour to thicken your cake mix up at this point, remembering that we’ll be adding more food colouring next, that will thin the mixture out a bit, again.

Separate half of the mixture into another bowl & your first food colouring. A little goes a long way! Then add the second colour to the other bowl, so you have two different coloured mixtures. If you want to, you could always add cocoa powder instead of food colouring to make choco-vanilla cupcakes!

Before & After

Put a dollop of the first mixture into each case & then the same with the second mixture. Keep alternating between the two, until all the mixture has gone. I filled my cases to about 2/3 full, as I wanted them to be big! Put them in the oven for 20-25 minutes. It’s hard to tell if they’re done when they’re coloured, so just push a butterknife into a cake & if it comes out clean, they’re good to go!

Leave them to cool down for an hour or so. They might shrink the tiniest bit (this has happened to me both times that I’ve made them, for some reason!), but don’t panic!

Mix together come icing sugar with your fav food colouring & a splash of water & spoon it on to your cakes. I always go with the flow with this part & don’t bother measuring out the sugar & water, as it depends how thick you like your icing to be!

Decorate & then finally, devour!

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	Filed under: Food Fix On: Friday, September 4, 2009 Love: 5 Comments »