Vanilla Buttercream Cupcakes

Today is my Nanna's birthday and to celebrate I decided to bake her some cupcakes. I much prefer cooking to baking but I couldn't really give her some spaghetti in place of a birthday cake, so I decided to try and make cupcakes. I decided on vanilla cupcakes with butter cream icing as they suit all tastes and tend to always taste nice regardless of who bakes them. The cupcakes did taste delicious, and everyone at my Nanna's party, and at work today loved my cupcakes.

What you will need

*cupcake cases - these can be paper or silicone (I personally think paper looks cuter but also helps hold the butter cream in place)
*cupcake baking tray (something similar to this will do)
*electric whisk
*wooden spoon
*weighing scales
*cooling rack
*piping bags and nozzles
*various toppings (sprinkles, chocolate curls, edible glitter, popping candy, strawberry crunch)

*110g/4oz butter (softened at room temperature)
*110g/4oz caster sugar
*2 eggs 
*1 teaspoon vanilla extract (if you want to make different flavour cupcakes replace this with an extract of something else) 
*110g/4oz self-raising flour
*1-2 tablespoons milk

For the buttercream:
*140g/5oz butter (softened at room temperature)
*280G/10oz icing sugar
*1-2 tablespoons milk
*a few drops of food colouring (optional)


What to do

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4 

2. Using an electric whisk cream the butter and sugar together until pale. Add the egg a bit at a time and beat together. Then mix in the vanilla flavouring

3. Fold in the flour a little bit at a time and add as much milk as necessary until it becomes runney enough to spoon into cases

4. Mix with an electric whisk for around 2/3 minutes or until the mixture is completely smooth

5. Put the mixture in cupcakes cases and put them on the tray. Then cover the cupcakes with a piece of tinfoil

6. After 10 minutes of baking, remove the tin foil and bake for a further 10 minutes

7. Once the cupcakes have been in for 15 minutes use a knife to see if they are cooked. You do this by poking the knife into the cupcake, if the blade has crumbs on then it is not cook. NOTE - the cakes will continue to cook outside the oven so do not leave them in the oven until they go hard

8. Leave the cupcakes on the tray to cool for 10 minutes and then place on a cooling rack (a metal oven tray works well for this if you do not have a cooling rack)

For the buttercream

1. For the buttercream icing, beat the butter in a large bowl until soft (with an electric whisk). Add half the icing sugar and beat until smooth

2. Then add the remaining icing sugar with one tablespoon of the milk, adding more milk if necessary, until the mixture is smooth and creamy

3. Add the food colouring until it is the colour you desire

4. Spoon the icing into a piping bag with a star nozzle and pipe the icing using a spiraling motion onto the cup cakes in a large swirl

5. DECORATE WITH AS MANY AMAZING TOPPINGS AS YOU WANT 

The piping of the icing takes a bit of practice, so I would recommend practicing on a plastic tray first and then reusing the icing on your cupcakes. Youtube have a lot of good tutorials. 

This recipe is all done using an electric whisk, I assume you can use a manual whisk but the results will not be as good and it is a lot of hard work. You can get an electric whisk for under £6 at Argos which is the one I used.

These cupcakes are not perfect and compared to Lola's cupcakes they look out of control: but they tasted delicious and they are homemade which always makes things more special ❤ 

This is my favourite one // chocolate pieces and silver glitter