Here is the recipe for my super sugar cupcakes!
125g softened butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup caster sugar
3 eggs (room temperature if possible)
1 cup flour
1/2 cup self raising flour
1/4 to 1/2 cup milk
1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees celcius (fan forced oven) or 180 conventional oven. Using your fingers, combine the butter and sugar. Really squish it together until the whole mix is combined and fluffy. Add the vanilla extract and make sure the extract is mixed through the entire thing.
2. Sift the flour and the self raising flour into the butter and sugar mix. If you had fun getting your hands dirty, you can use your hands again to mix this dry mix all up! But cupcake purists would probably not do this...
3. Make a little well in the middle and crack in the 3 eggs. I beat the eggs up in the well to make mixing a bit easier. Then pour a bit of milk in and mix the entire thing together. Try to mix it as little as possible. If it's too dry slowly add some more milk in until the mix is nice and gloppy but not too runny. As soon as it's all combined stop mixing. If there's large chunks just squish it with your spoon.
4. This recipe only works for mini/small cupcakes. Avoid muffin sized patty pans. I used the white small Home Brand patty pans, they seem to be a little bit bigger than mini patty pans so I can ice them easier. Put the pans in a cupcake tray and fill the pans up 3/4 of the way (about 1 heaped tablespoon). If you don't have a cupcake tray, then putting your patty pans on a normal tray is okay, just make sure there's plenty of space around each patty pans otherwise the cupcakes will expand into each other and go all funny shaped.
5. Bake for about 20 minutes or when they're just golden in colour. I like to rotate the tray once at 10 minutes and so important not to overcook these as they go chewy (coz of the sugar and butter content lol.) Take out and cool on a rack or just on a table, again just distance them out a bit from each other. Voila! Make extras so you can snack on them as you ice them!! Actually, I usually don't ice them coz they're already sweet enough... But it's Halloween and my friends from Peewee are in town so I'ma gona do it!
Passionfruit Icing
Ingredients:
125 gm softened unsalted butter
30ml milk
2 passionfruit
1 tablespoon vanilla
4 cups sifted icing sugar
Icing bags (I had plastic ones - get them from the supermarket or from your best friend's mum's pantry)
1. Using an electric mixer, beat the butter by itself for a while until it turns a pale colour. It should take about 5-10 minutes.
2. Pour in vanilla icing and milk, and 2 cups of sifted icing sugar. Beat that until all mixed in. Then add in the other 2 cups of sifted icing sugar.
3. Add in the passionfruit pulp and beat the icing for another 5-10 minutes. You probably don't need to beat it for this long, but the longer you do it the fluffier and more easily spreadable it is.
4. Seperate your icing into how ever many different colours you want. Add colours. I used a butter knife to spread my icing on the tops of the cupcakes and plastic icing bags with the ends snipped off for piping.
For tips of piping you can watch this youtube video.
For black icing you have to buy the black dye from the supplier, or get it from your best friend's mum who happens to be a cake decorator! Be careful with this stuff as it stains fingers!
5. Chuck the cupcakes in the fridge for a bit to let the icing to set.
Ta-da!! Now watch all your friends eat em and get stained teeth (it comes off quickly) and be surprised that the black icing is passionfruity!
One last thing, try and make your cupcakes on the day or as close to the day of eating as you can! If you need to store them, chuck em in the fridge (coz it's butter icing). They'll be good for 2-3 days.
Yay! Cupcakes are fun!! Thanks for reading!!
xoxo
