Sweets for my sweet - Chocolate cupcake with Vanilla icing

The other day i made some oh-so cute chocolate cupcakes with rich vanilla icing. I love cupcakes and all the super cute decorations you can do on them. My cake decoration skill really aren't that great,but it really is all about how they taste.

I thought id share with you this simple cupcake recipe (you can adapt it to any flavour or variation) :

• Ingredients:
• 2 cups self-raising flour, sifted
• 3/4 cup caster sugar
• 3/4 cup milk (i used soy milk)
• 125g butter, melted, cooled
• 2 x 59g eggs, beaten
• 1 teaspoon Queen Natural Vanilla Essence
• (For the chocolate ones i made, omit 1tbs of SR flour and the vanilla essence and add 1tbs of coca powder)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180°C (conventional, fan forced can prevent them from rising) . Grease or place patty cases into a 12 cup muffin/cupcake pan . Combine dry ingredients in a bowl, make a well in the centre.
2. Add milk, butter, eggs and vanilla to flour mixture, use a beater or whisk to mix ingredients. You want to try and get a nice light mixture.
3. Spoon mixture into prepared muffin pan. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Stand in pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

You can eat as is or add icing :)

Ingredients:

• 250g unsalted butter, at room temperature, chopped
• 3 cups pure icing sugar, sifted
• 1 to 2 tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla icing

Method:

1. Using an electric mixer, beat butter until white and creamy. Add icing sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, and mix well. Add enough milk to make icing spreadable.
2. Spread over cakes with flat knife or with a piping bag.

Then decorate to your hearts content!

Hope you all have fun making (and eating) these!

Tips:

try to use full fat milk, the extra light watered down milks will result in less creamy cupcakes.

Do not mix the dry icing sugar! gently mix it into the butter first, otherwise you will end up with icing sugar all over the kitchen.

If you don't have a piping bag, you can cut the corner off  a zip lock bag. Works just as well.