wedding cupcakes

Weddings & cakes, cakes & weddings. These words are music to my ears.

Weddings & cakes & 'Hannah, will you make some cakes for my wedding?'

Well, that's more like an orchestra reaching its crescendo in my ears.

A few months ago, I had the joy of hearing this crescendo which culminates in one thing.

Baking. 

So here's how I rolled for the wedding at the weekend....

The order:

Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting (like you've never tasted before)
Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Buttercream Frosting

For both types of cake I used very simple & straightforward recipes - the kind you know like the back of your hand. 

The frostings are the most time consuming element for both, but they're worth the effort, promise. So as not to overwhelm you with recipes, I will post them in separate posts.

Chocolate Cupcakes: recipe: from my Mother's kitchen

ingredients

225g / 8oz butter at room temperature
225g / 80z caster sugar
200g self raising flour
25g cocoa
4 eggs

NB: I had been asked to make relatively small cakes for the wedding, therefore these quanities yielded far more than if I had used cupcake cases & trays, but you can use whatever size you like, depending on how little or large you like your cakes to be.

1) Preheat the oven to 180C / Gas mark 4 & line your bun trays (whatever size you like) with cases.

2) In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until creamy. Beat in one egg.

3) Add another egg & sieve in a little flour then beat together. Repeat this for the remaining eggs,

4) Fold in the remaining flour & cocoa (sieved) with a metal spoon. 

(If you are fortunate enough to have a free standing mixer, then you probably just want to mix in the flour on a low speed. If speed is of the essence in your baking, just use electric beaters to mix in the flour. I am still a little old fashioned and like to follow my mother's technique.. She does everything by hand, but I only apply this to folding in where adding air is the main aim to get well-risen cakes.)

5) If your mixture is a little stiff, I would recommend adding a little slosh of milk to loosen it up nicely.

6) Spoon generous desertspoons of mixture into your cupcake cases. If you are using smaller cases, I would suggest using a teaspoon's worth of mixture instead. Be careful not to overfill the cases as you want to allow room for the icing. 

7) Bake in your pre-heated oven for 15 - 18 minutes (smaller cakes will require less time). A little trick my Mother taught me for telling when your cakes are baked is to listen to them. Yep, you read that correctly. Take your tray of piping hot buns and put your ear near to the tray (don't burn yourself though!!). If you can hear a little crackling sound emanating from them, they need a few more minutes. 

Alternatively, you could use a skewer, which should come out clean when inserted into the centre of the cake, but I think this is too much faff for little cakes.

8) When your cakes have had their time in the oven, remove and place on a wire cooling rack. Leave in the tins for a few minutes and then place onto the rack to cool completely before icing.

The recipe for the frosting will be coming soon...

Cake Count :: 753