Joyeux anniversaire bébé

Unfortunately I am missing my girlie's birthday because I am now living in Paris and am no longer just a smelly bus ride away.

Happy birthday to my classy oiseau!

Luckily the cupcakes I made her were still fresh for her birthday, probably due to some sort of wonderful birthday magic (I put them in the freezer). I made three types...

Mojito Cupcakes:

• 120g self-raising flour
• 130g caster sugar
• Pinch of baking powder
• 100ml milk (best if it's whole milk)
• 1 egg, beaten 
• 40g butter 
• 1 lime (rind and juice)
• Handful of fresh mint

Pre-heat your oven to 170c. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, mix in the rest of the dry ingredients. Grate the rind of the lime into the mixture and then add the juice. Slowly add the milk and egg whilst mixing until it's all lovely and smooth. Chop up your mint into really tiny bits and mix well. Put the mixture into paper cases (makes about 12ish) and bake for around 25 minutes. 

Mojito Butter Cream:

• Handful of fresh mint
• 1 lime (ring and juice)
• 1 teaspoon of peppermint extract
• 250g icing sugar
• 80g butter
• Milk

Chop up your fresh mint into really little bits (leave some sprigs for decoration if you want) and then beat everything together until really smooth and fluffy. Use the milk in little splashes until you get a nice consistency. Pipe/spread the icing over your cupcakes and you're done!

Next were the...

Marshmallow (vanilla) Cupcakes: 

• 120g self-raising flour
• 130g caster sugar
• Pinch of baking powder
• 120ml milk (best if it's whole milk)
• 1 egg, beaten
• 40g butter
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Pre-heat oven to 170c. Cream the butter and sugar together until nice and fluffy. Add in the dry ingredients and mix. Beat together the egg, milk and vanilla and add it into the mixture splash by splash, mixing all the way. Spoon into around 12 paper cases and bake for 20 minutes or so.

Marshmallow Butter Cream:

• 170g butter
• 280g icing sugar
• 1 whole jar of marshmallow fluff (this is the sweetest icing ever)
• Teensy drop of vanilla essence 
• Glace cherries to decorate

Mix the butter and sugar together and then add the fluff and mix for agessssss until nice and smooth. Pipe onto your cupcakes and pop a cherry on top.

And finally (these were my favourite)... 

Lemon and Fresh Strawberry Cupcakes:

• 120g self-raising flour 
• 130g caster sugar
• Pinch of baking powder
• 100ml milk (best if it's whole milk)
• 1 egg, beaten
• 40g butter
• 1 lemon, rind and juice
• 2 handfuls of fresh strawberries 

Pre-heat oven to 170c. Mix butter and sugar until nice and fluffy. Chuck in dry ingredients and then add the lemon, milk and egg and mix well. Chop up your strawberries (keep them quite chunky) and gently fold into the mixture. Spoon into paper cases (about 12ish) and bake for 25 minutes.

Lemon Butter Cream:

• 250g icing sugar
• 80g butter
• 1 lemon (just the juice)
• Milk
• Something cute to decorate them with 

Mix everything together really well until light and fluffy, use the milk in little splashes to get the right consistency. Spread onto the cupcakes (once they have cooled) and decorate however you want!

Voila! Three different types of cupcakes, happy birthday Faye! 

Little chunky apple and cinnamon cakes

I decorated these with chocolate and apple but if you leave them plain they'd taste so good warm for a dessert with custard/cream/ice cream or something else that will probably result in a big fat heart attack.

Little Chunky Apple and Cinnamon Cakes:

• 140g self-raising flour
• 3 teaspoons of ground cinnamon 
• A pinch of clove
• A pinch of salt
• 200g sugar
• 70ml of vegetable/sunflower oil
• 1 egg (beaten)
• Splash of milk
• 2 medium apples, peeled and cut into little chunks

Pre-heat the oven to 170c. Mix the flour, cinnamon, clove and salt in one bowl then add the sugar, oil and the egg and mix really well. Add the milk to loosen the mixture a little and throw in the apple chunks and mix it all up. Spoon into cases (will probably get about 10 cupcakes out of this mixture) and bake for around half an hour. Melt some plain chocolate to spread on top and finish with a piece of sliced apple. Deeeeeelicious.

Ganache is good

These are just basic vanilla cupcakes (the recipe is in an earlier post here) but with a silky smooth dark chocolate ganache on top, plus they're in leopard print cases - FAB.

Dark Chocolate Ganache

• 200g dark chocolate broken up into chunks 
• 300ml double cream 

Yep that's it! All you do is heat the milk in a pan until it's boiling - keep mixing because it'll burn on the bottom of the pan. Once the milk has just started to boil tip it over the chocolate (in a separate bowl) and mix until all the chocolate has melted, then stick it in the fridge for a few hours until it's set a little - I usually use the freezer because I am really impatient. Squash into a piping bag and pipe it over your cupcakes, decorate with whatever, I used little white chocolate stars but I think a raspberry stuck on top would look (and taste) really good.

Messy cupcakes are well cuter

I love making cupcakes because it means I get to use my 24 nozzle piping kit (ta mum). However, mine NEVER EVER EVER look all perfect and neat so I've stopped trying and just let them be a lil bit wonky. I made these for a friend's birthday (baked goodies make such a good present when you're broke), plus it was my first attempt at brown sugar Italian butter cream which was delish. I made three different types - the pink ones are raspberry, white ones are pink grapefruit and the ones with the chocolate chips are vanilla. I just used my basic cupcake recipe, separated into three bowls and added the different stuff.

Basic Cupcakes

• 175g of butter (soften it up in the microwave a wee bit)
• 175g caster sugar
• 3 eggs (beaten)
• 175g self-raising flour
• 1 pinch of baking powder

Pre-heat your oven to 170c (this is for a fan oven, reduce it by 10-20c for a normal oven). Mix up your butter and sugar until super creamy (this is your trick for light cakes, the longer you whip it the lighter your cakes will be), add in the rest of the ingredients, spoon into paper cases and bake for 15 minutes(ish).

For the raspberry ones I chucked some raspberries into the batter, for the grapefruit ones I squeezed half a pink grapefruit and grated some of the rind into the batter and for the vanilla ones I added a teaspoon of vanilla extract and a handful of chocolate chips (then ate a handful to myself obviously).

Ok, now for the topping. I seem to make butter cream up as I go along but here is the basic outline:

Basic Butter Cream

• 50g butter (again - soften it up)
• 140g icing sugar
• Nice splash of milk

Mix it all up and you're done! For the raspberry and the pink grapefruit butter cream I didn't add any milk, I just added the fruit/fruit juice, you may need some more icing sugar for the raspberry one as it goes quite liquid, also add your raspberries a couple at a time to avoid it turning into sugary pink water! For the brown sugar Italian butter cream I got some help from Martha Stewart here , it's really good and way easier than it looks.

Ta da, all boxed up with a little diagram of the flavours