Pink and orange cupcakes

Over the past few months my family and friends have been buying sprinkles for me wherever they see them. I got sprinkles as presents for Christmas and every time I see my mum she's found some more in the £1 shop, or somewhere like that.

I've also been buying sprinkles wherever I can. In fact, I jump at the chance to go to a different supermarket just so I can check out their sprinkle collection. I know have a huge cupboard dedicated to sprinkles and baking goods which is ridiculous in my small kitchen!

Pink and orange is one of those colour combinations that you don't often see together but I personally love. On my sprinkle journeys I've picked up a few sets which I can then match together, even if they didn't come together - this includes orange, pink, white and yellow stars from Asda, pink hundreds and thousands from Sainsburys and orange and pink jimmies that I got as a present. They were my inspiration for last Sunday's cupcakes.

I also did a little experiment with the frosting based on something I saw in Sainsbury's magazine a few months back: I split the frosting into two parts and coloured one with pink food colouring. Then I added both parts into one piping bag so it would come out half pink and half white.

I made vanilla cakes in orange and pink cases with the two-colour cream cheese frosting and decorated with the pink and orange sprinkles.

Rainbow cupcakes

If a rainbow could be made into a person, that person would be a lot like my friend Jane. Everything you could say to describe a rainbow describes Jane - bright, happy, magical, rare.

I made these rainbow cakes in celebration of Jane's birthday. I didn't see Jane for her birthday but I made these at home in tribute of when we were at uni together and would bake cakes. In fact, Jane taught me a recipe for cupcakes that has now developed into the recipe that I use every week.

So firstly, I made my favourite vanilla cake recipe but before cooking I split the batter. I would recommend that you split it equally into six bowls and then mix your colours.

I didn't split them equally and I regretted it. I tried to have a little more red so I could then add blue to make purple, etc. But as you can see from my pics I ended up with hardly any purple batter and therefore tiny cakes. Whereas I had loads of red and green batter and ended up with an unevenly sized batch.

To mix the colours all you need is red, yellow and blue food colouring and then combine them to make the colours in between. Red + yellow = orange. Yellow + blue = green. Blue + red = purple. If you can find orange, green and purple food colouring however, you are likely to get better colour that is less muddy. I already had green so I just mixed red and yellow to make orange and red and blue to make purple.

I added the food colouring directly to the batter instead of mixing it first. That meant I could see exactly what effect the colouring had on the batter. As the batter has a yellow tint anyway I needed to use more food colouring on the blue and purple to lose the yellow-ish colour.

I used coloured cases to match to add to the effect and after they were baked I frosted them with cream cheese frosting and sprinkled with rainbow coloured hundreds and thousands.

Malteaser cupcakes

A few weeks ago I was browsing flickr for some inspiration and I found these gorgeous Malteaser cakes by Monniecakes. Not just one but three Malteasers on one cake? Yum!

So, I made these with my favourite chocolate cake recipe and piped cream cheese frosting on the top. Then I topped the cakes with three Malteasers each. Sooo tasty.

For a little variation on this you could put Malteasers actually in the cake, either a whole one per cake, or crumbled up in the mixture. That would be delicious - a little like those Easter eggs with Malteaser bits in the chocolate.

Above you can see them on the new cake stand that I got for Christmas from my beautiful boyfriend.

Cream cheese frosting recipe

Most recipes only use cream cheese frosting for rich cakes like carrot or red velvet but I like this frosting on any cake, even your basic vanilla. This will be enough to frost 12 cupcakes or 6 large muffins.

Ingredients

• 100g Soft cheese (also known as cream cheese, I prefer Philadelphia)
• 25g Unsalted butter (at room temperature)
• 125g Icing sugar

Instructions

1. Add all the ingredients into a bowl with high sides (suitable for whisking).
   
2. Mix the soft cheese, unsalted butter and icing sugar with a spoon until you have a porridge-like texture (I find this step necessary so you don't get covered in a cloud of icing sugar in the next step).
3. Use an electric whisk to blend the frosting. Don't stop until all lumps of butter and cheese are whisked away (literally!) and it becomes light and fluffy - whisk for longer to make it thicker.
4. Spread over your cupcakes with a spatula or fill a zip lock bag, snip the corner and pipe.
   

The longer you whisk the frosting the thicker it will become and therefore the easier to pipe but it will be ready to spread over your cupcakes as soon as all lumps are gone.

These are the reasons I love cream cheese frosting:

• This recipe will transform any cupcake, even if you have cooked them a little too long and they are a bit crisp on top - they will still taste delicious.
  
• I find that this frosting helps to keep your cakes nice and moist if you eat them gradually over a week like me and it doesn't separate over time like butter cream.
• The frosting comes out in very white so you can add any colour to it and get a great effect. White also goes with any colour of sprinkles.
  

Red velvet cupcakes

I had never heard of Red Velvet cake until recently. Firstly, I tried some in the cafe at my work, then Crumbs and Doilies had it as their flavour of the month, then I saw them everywhere on all my favourite cupcake blogs. This was something I only tried this week and it's been a while since I've shared a recipe, so here goes:

Ingredients

• 1x large egg
• 100g baking margarine
• 100g caster sugar
• 75g self raising flour
• 25g cocoa (Green & Blacks fairtrade is my favourite!)
• 1 bottle of red food colouring (Silver spoon cake craft is the best for colour)
  

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 180ºC or Gas mark 4 or 350ºF
2. In your mixing bowl beat together the margarine and sugar with a spatula until smooth.
   
3. Break the egg and add to the mixing bowl, fold into the mixture.
4. Add the flour and cocoa, mix together until you have a smooth batter. If you want to make it more chocolate-y just add more cocoa here but take out an equal amount of flour - make sure that whatever ratio you use, the flour and cocoa should equal 100g.
   
5. Pour in the entire bottle of red food colouring (yes, the entire bottle! If you added more cocoa you will need more food colouring to make them just as red)
   
6. Put the batter into a zip lock bag and pipe equally into cupcake cases.
   
7. Put in the oven for 10 - 15 minutes. Once you think they are cooked press down on one of the cakes, if it springs back then the cakes are done!
8. Frost with lots of cream cheese frosting and sprinkle with chocolate flakes or curls.
   

Blue and pink edged cupcakes

After I made my black and white cupcakes I wanted to do some edged cupcakes again.

These lovelies were made with vanilla cakes and cream cheese frosting, I then edged with blue and pink ball sprinkles.

I actually used sprinkles from two different sets. I matched them up because they both have a similar matte look. Even though the blue ones came in a set with red and blue sprinkles I think the pink and blue look great together, it's sort of a blue-purple colour, lush!

Black and white cupcakes

It's been a while since I've blogged, I need to catch up!

I made these cupcakes with my favourite vanilla recipe and used some of the designer icing tubes that seem to be popping up everywhere at the moment. I chose black and white tubes then I decorated with black writing icing, white jimmies, white stars and white sugar balls.

I have to say I'm not keen on icing. I'm so used to cream cheese frosting now that I found the icing to be dry, it hardens very quickly and even the cupcakes underneath seemed to dry out more quickly. I think that cream cheese frosting keeps your cakes nice and soft.

I did however, love icing the cakes and then dipping only the edges in white jimmies. I love that look where the sprinkles are only around the edge. I think I might try it again ;)