These are Valentine’s cupcakes for people who have no interest/clue how to decorate a cupcake and need something fast. It’s easy…like super easy…like, chill with a drink while you prepare to decorate these bad boys kinda easy.
Unless you burn water, you will manage these cupcakes.
It’s a simple Vanilla sponge with strawberry jam running through it, a cream cheese frosting and some pink sugar dust on top. It still looks impressive and you will get an “aww” for presenting them.
The Cupcake:
140g Plain Flour
150g Caster Sugar
1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder (I use double action because nothing rises in Cornwall)
1 tsp Vanilla Essence
1 Egg
50g Butter
150ml Milk (or 3/4 C)
1. Start by mixing the flour, sugar, butter and baking powder in an electric mixer or with a handheld mixer. You want a sandy consistency.
NOTE: I like to add a bit of custard powder to my cupcakes. Why? Because it makes the mixture a little thicker and makes the cupcake a little sturdier so you don’t have to treat it like it’s going to cave in at any moment. You can add it to the wet ingredients or to the dry ingredients.
2. Add half the milk to your dry ingredients and mix on a medium speed.
3. Whisk the egg with the remaining milk and vanilla essence.
4. Add the rest of the wet ingredients. Make sure you scrape down the sides of your bowl evertime you add a new ingredient to be mixed. It helps with the process.
5. This is strawberry jam time! Put as much or as little strawberry jam into the mixture as you like (I personally only like a little bit) And then stir it through the batter. Don’t overmix, you want streaks of the jam in your cake, not just mixed in.
6. Bake your cupcakes at 180 Degrees C for 10 to 12 minutes.
Simple!
Frosting:
500g Icing Sugar
160g Butter
1tsp Vanilla Essence
1/2C Cream Cheese
1TBsp Milk
1. Mix the icing sugar and butter together in an electric mixer until the butter has broken up.
2. Add the vanilla essence and the cream cheese and mix together until the frosting comes together.
3. Add the milk to the mixture (adjust the amount if you need more or less) and turn the mixer speed up fairly high and allow the frosting to be beaten for up to 8 minutes. The longer you beat, the fluffier it gets!
The Coloured Sugar:
There is a whole how-to guide about coloured sugar. Now, technically, you are supposed to use sand sugar, but I used caster sugar and it looked fine.
It comes out all sparkly and lovely. For stuff like this in the shops, we pay nearly £4 in the UK and that’s if you’re lucky enough to find it so thanks Sugarbelle! This is a technique I will definitely be using in the future. I even have old jars that I have cleaned in prep for storing these new found sugar sparkles.
There you are, easily decorated cupcakes for Valentine’s Day!
Samantha
