Birthday Cupcakes...

As Littlest Baker's birthday was on a Thursday this year we held the (seemingly obligatory) party on the Saturday. Meaning that I had to decide between holding back on the Birthday cake until the Saturday, doing two cakes one for each day or what I ended up deciding to do which I think worked quite well.
Rather than making a big cake to share out amongst all of the party goers I decided to go for cupcakes as party favours, handed out with the party bags to each child as they were leaving. For me this was a great idea as it meant no worrying about there being enough cake for each guest or cutting the cake into equal slices or trying to wrap it all up to be carried home and spending time cleaning up from cutting it up whilst cleaning up the party room... just handing them a ready wrapped cake, perfectly sized for little and grown up hands. There was also the added bonus of there being two lots of cake in the week, not a fact that got past Littlest baker!

The cupcake recipe I used was a standard cupcake recipe, no need to play with something so tried and tested!

Ingredients:
175g (6oz) Self-raising flour
175g (6oz) Soft margarine
175g (6oz) Caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
3 medium eggs

Method:

Heat the oven to 180 deg C, 350 deg F or Gas mark 4. Put a paper case in each hole of a 12 hole deep muffin tray.
Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl. Add the margarine, sugar, eggs and vanilla essence.
Beat the mix together until smooth.
Spoon the mix into the paper cases, dividing it evenly between them all. (The cases need to be about half full).
Bake for 20-25 minutes, until firm and golden on top.
Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before icing.

The cakes themselves really are that easy to make, and so nice to eat!

First batch of cakes cooling

 



The icing was a bit more difficult for me, as I'd never used an icing bag before in my life and was just hoping that I'd be able to get some half decent decorations piped onto the cakes (foolish I know!).

Though having said that, it wasn't as difficult as I'd imagined it to be, I didn't do traditional cupcake swirls as I think I need to practise that before doing it on cakes intended for people other than family. My main issue was filling the piping bag, dealing with that is what made the whole decorating take about an hour more than necessary. I *think* the problem was that the icing bag just wasn't big enough, and so trying to get the butter cream into it became messy and annoying. I don't like blaming the tools, but I don't see what else it could have been. I tried cooling the butter cream which then made it too hard to get through the nozzle (don't cool it by putting it in the freezer, even for 10 minutes!) and leaving it on the side to soften up which just made it squidge all over my hands (which I hated as I don't like having sticky hands, eurgh).

 

But, I persevered and after giving up on the piping bag, (which has now gone to the great dustbin in the sky) and making one out of grease proof paper with the piping nozzle I managed to get all 30 cupcakes decorated. Hurrah!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 'ice cream' cupcakes were a little experiment I tried with the last bit of batter, hence there only being two. They were made by using one ice cream scoop of batter in each cone and baked in the oven at 180 deg taking 30-35 minutes to cook. The batter does actually fill the cone whilst cooking so don't be tempted to add more raw batter thinking it won't be enough - it will! Oh, and the cones stay perfectly edible, which makes the 'ice cream' cupcakes even more perfect as party favours as they can be eaten entirely on hoof and their novelty value is right up there.

 

 

The cupcake toppers were bought from an online baking store, which I now can't remember the name of, though they are widely available from most kitchen/baking stores and even supermarkets. Much easier than trying to make them yourself unless you have a steady hand and a lot of patience (two things which I do not have).

 



 





 

 

 

 



All in all, I'm quite pleased with how the cakes went, and there certainly wasn't much left by the end of the day, so I'm guessing everyone else agreed with me!