Sinfully Sweet Honey Cupcakes

So sweet and sticky! These cupcakes are quite rich, but taste so good! They're easy to through together and take no time to bake. The taste is so unique; the honey flavour is clearly there, but isn't too strong. These little sugar-packed delights are perfect for those with a sweet tooth!

Ingredients

• 125g clear honey
• 125g unsalted butter
• 75g light soft brown sugar
• 175g self raising flour
• 2 eggs, beaten

 Method
1) Preheat the oven to 180°C and prepare a cupcake tray with cupcakes cases.
2) In a small pan, weigh out the sugar, honey and butter. Place this on a low heat and stir until melted. Make sure to stir often, otherwise the mixture will stick to the bottom of the pan. When melted, take off the heat and leave to cool.

3) Next you can either pour the mixture into a medium bowl or leave in the pan. Add the remaining ingredients and beat until combined.

4) Pour the batter into the cupcake cases and bake in the oven for 7-9 minutes. You can prepare the icing/decoration in this time. Remember to stick a skewer in the center to check if they are done; if it comes out clean, they are baked.  The cakes should be golden brown.

5) Take them out of the oven and leave in the tray for several minutes. Then place them onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
6) When cool, you can ice or decorate them as you please! I iced mine with buttercream- my favourite- and drizzled honey on top. However I would advise you to not put the honey on, it made them quite rich!

A little too sweet for me, but my friends loved them! Sinfully sweet and rather rich, sweet tooths will love these! 4/5

Happy baking!

Light and Fluffy Sweet Cream

I have been using butter-cream a lot, so I wanted to try something different. I loved this recipe because it sweetens cream subtly but perfectly. Great for scones or dryer cakes!

Ingredients

• 1 cup double cream
• 2 tbsp icing sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Method
1) With an electric mixer, simply whisk all of these ingredients together until soft peaks form. This recipe also works well in a piping bag. However, I tried to dye the cream after I whisked it and it separated into curds and whey, so I would just leave it un-coloured as that was easier.

Credit: recipes.howstuffworks.com

'Melting Moments'

Melting Moments are the heirs to custard creams. Their short-bready texture makes them the perfect accompaniment to a nice cup of tea - the prefect tea time treat! Smooth buttercream sandwiched between sweet and crunchy biscuits. We added a touch of red food colouring to the icing for decoration. We also dusted our COAB (Confessions of a Bake-a-holic) heart logo onto the top of our biscuits with icing sugar to make them our own.

Ingredients:

• 200g unsalted butter, softened.
• 190g icing sugar, plus more for dusting.
• 155g plain flour
• 140g corn flour

Method:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C, gas mark 4. Line/grease two baking trays with baking paper or butter.

2. For the biscuits, sift all the dry ingredients together in a bowl and add the butter. Mix well with an electric mixer.

3. Using your hands roll tablespoonfuls of the mixture into about 24 small balls. Place the bowls on the baking trays. Gently press down on the top of each biscuit with a fork to flatten them so they are almost doubled in size.

4. Bake for about 9 minutes until they're light, golden brown. Don't leave them in too long or they will become too crispy.

5. When they have cooled, dollop a spoonful of icing in the center of one disc and place another of the biscuits on top to sandwich them together. We have used our own recipe for the butter cream icing. Click here to see the link.

6. Dust with icing sugar to decorate. We used a heart stencil to dust on the COAB logo.

This recipe was slightly deceiving. Many of the claims made by the authors turned out to be inaccurate. Because of this we had to tweak it in a few places and use some creativity when decorating to hide the discrepancies. The biscuits were tasty overall, but slightly over-sweet and filling. 3/5

Simply Sweet Buttercream!

Shown above on our Rainbow Cupcakes. Click here to see the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 250g icing sugar, sifted
• 80g unsalted butter, softened
• 25ml whole milk
• a couple of drops of vanilla extract (optional)

Simply mix together the icing sugar and softened butter until combined. Next, add the milk in small measures until you reach your desired texture and a smooth consistency. Finally, add the reccomended amount of vanilla extract (optional). In the picture we have used, we coloured the icing with a small amount of blue food colouring.

Glace Icing Secrets

Whilst baking yesterday I discovered the perfect glace icing recipe. It isn't one from the internet or a recipe book, but just came about through experimenting with amounts.
I wanted a thicker consistency as this makes icing the cakes significantly easier. Start with a large amount of icing sugar and gradually add small drops of water until you can stir the mixture but with some degree of resistance.

The Method
 Dollop a small amount of the icing into the centre of the cake and spread it, moving the spoon or palette knife in circular motions. Do this until a circle of icing is formed that spreads to nearly the edge of the cake, leaving a small space around the outside. If the icing is the correct consistency, it should naturally spread to the very edges of the caking. Leaving the icing to do this of it's own accord creates a much neater, less forced-looking edge and a smoother surface. Once iced, leave the cakes in room temperature until the icing sets. I suggest you choose one that's worked slightly less well as a 'tester cupcake'. This means you can test the solidity of the icing with your fingers without worrying about leaving dents on the 'better looking' examples.

I also added a drop of lilac food dye to give it a bit of colour.

Happy Baking!

No better place to start than with cupcakes!

Blueberry Cupcakes

Not the classic blueberry muffins, but blueberry cupcakes!  Daring, I know.  With these cakes, you will get a surprising glimpse of bursting berry-ness with every bite.  At first, you may think: "Oh, nice.  Some more vanilla cupcakes- that's OK."  But, delve deeper and you will discover more satisfyingly sweet flavour of blueberries and butter-cream.

Recipe

 Ingredients

• 150g Self Raising flour, sifted
• 150g margarine
• 150g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbl vanilla extract
• 20 blueberries, cut into quarters or halves

 Butter-cream Icing

• 300g icing sugar
• 250g butter, soft
• 1 - 2 tbls whole milk 
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• Food colouring (optional)

 Method

1. Firstly, preheat the oven to 150°C.  We used the all-in-one method for this recipe.  So, we simply weighed and measured our ingredients and threw them all together on a large bowl.  We then mixed the ingredients together using an electric whisk.
2. Secondly, we placed 15 cupcake cases into a baking tray and poured our mixed into each case.  Tip: Don't fill each case too high, this gives the cakes a flat surface and therefore makes them easier to ice (and you'll get more cakes!).
3. When your oven has heated up, put the tray(s) inside; preferably as close to the center of the oven as you can.  Put the timer on for about 20-25 minutes.  While they cook, you can make the icing!
4.  Measure out the icing sugar and butter (make sure it is very soft!) and whisk them together in a bowl until light and fluffy.  Add milk if the mixture is not fluffy enough.  Finally, add the vanilla and food colouring (we used a few drops of red so that it became a pastel-pink colour).
5. When ready, place the cakes onto a cooling rack to cool. Make sure that the cakes have cooled completely before icing, because if they are too warm the icing will melt.

We found these cupcakes very fun to make and delicious to eat! The icing stood out to us especially.  4/5

Happy baking!

Credits to: http://uktv.co.uk/goodfood/homepage/sid/566