Cupcake Recipe

These pretty homemade cupcakes taste delicious, and are fun and easy to make. Children will love helping you to decorate them! The icing sets hard, so they travel well, and are perfect for picnics and parties. At the bottom of the recipe, I list a few different vegetarian cupcake decorations that you can buy.

Some cupcake decorations are not vegetarian, so check the labels, and shop around. The decorations listed below are labelled suitable for vegetarians.

• Supercook Sugar Strands
• Morrisons Hundreds and Thousands
• Silverspoon Cakecraft Silver Balls (available at Sainsburys)
• Morrisons Pink Glitter Sugar
• Edible heart and star decorations (from Lakeland).

Ingredients (makes 12 portions)

• 115 g (4 oz)  Soft margarine
• 115 g (4 oz) Castor sugar
• 2 eggs
• 115 g (4 oz) Self-raising flour
• 2/3 tsp baking powder
• To decorate: 1 egg white,150 -180 g icing sugar, 1 tsp vanilla essence (optional), food colouring (optional)
• Sprinkles of your choice (see bottom of post for information about vegetarian decorations)

Equipment

• shallow 12-cup bun tin
• Piping set (optional, but will make the cakes look prettier)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 160° C/325°F/gas mark 3.
2. Line a shallow 12-cup bun tin with baking cases.
3. Mix all the ingredients together and beat thoroughly (either by-hand in a large bowl or in a food processor).
4. Spoon the mixture into the baking cases (ensuring the mixture is evenly distributed) and bake for 25 minutes.
5. The cakes are cooked when a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
6. Leaves the cakes to cool on a wire rack.
7. To make the icing, add the egg white to a large mixing bowl. Make sure that no yolk is contaminating the white.
8. Add the vanilla essence (if using).
9. Gradually sift icing sugar into the egg white, mixing after every so often.
10. When the mixture is starting to thicken, add a small amount of the colouring of your choice (ensure you read the instructions on the label, to make sure you do not add too much). Mix in and add more colour if necessary.
11. Finish adding icing sugar until the icing is stiff enough to hold a peak (basically so that if you create a small spike in the icing it won't collapse). You may need more or less icing sugar than is specified in the recipe. It is dependent on the amount of egg white and colouring. If you have added too much icing sugar, you can add a little water to thin it out again.
12. If you want to make rustic-style cupcakes, you can spoon the icing on and spread it with a knife. Otherwise you will need an icing nozzle to pipe the icing onto the cake.
13. Add sprinkles to the icing immediately (the icing will set fairly quickly) and press them in lightly so that they stick.

Tips

• Make sure the cakes are cool before decorating. Too warm and the decorations could melt.
• The cakes will keep in an air tight box for a few days after baking.