Testing Piping Nozzle Techniques with American Vanilla Cupcakes

I 'splashed out' today and brought myself new baking stuff from Lakeland! How exciting..! Basically just brought a set of cupcake icing nozzles which are huge compared to all of my other icing nozzles so I had to go home and test them out. I've grown to really like the American batter cupcakes so I made an easy vanilla batch then some basic buttercream frosting to test out the nozzles.


Cake Ingredients
180g self raising flour
210g caster sugar
80g salted butter
180ml whole milk
1 large egg/ 2 smaller eggs
vanilla extract


Buttercream
500g icing sugar
200g butter
25ml whole milk
few drops of vanilla


Method
Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius, have 12 hole muffin tin lined

1. Put flour, sugar and butter in a bowl together and beat until all combined; like very fine breadcrumbs.
2. In a jug, mix egg and milk then very gradually pour it into the flour mix until smooth, but do not over mix
3. Pour mixture into cupcakes and bake for 20- 25 minutes
4. Take out of the oven and leave to cool
5. For the frosting, beat the butter till fluffy, then gradually add the icing sugar; it will get quite stiff but it will get looser when the butter melts a little more and the milk is added. At this point, you can add cocoa powder or colouring as you wish
6. When all the icing sugar is incorporated, add the milk and vanilla, spoon into piping bags and you're away!

This is my first attempt at cupcake icing, so they're not great. My favourites are the rose style ones!

enjoy! x

Red Velvet Valentines Cupcakes

Okay, so I hate romantic crap, but I had such a craving to bake, and all the valentines baking is so pretty that I thought I would bake these for valentines day this year. Its another recipe with amazing cream cheese frosting (this time vanilla) and I got to test chocolate piping which was, interesting! Red velvet cupcakes are so tasty; the slightly chocolately vanilla flavour is made more intense by the buttermilk in the recipe and the best thing is that because it's an American recipe, the cake mix is more of a batter, so you can literally put it in a jug and pour it into the cases- SO much easier!

Cupcake Ingredients:

125g sifted flour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoons (10 g) good quality cocoa powder

57 g unsalted butter, at room temperature

150g granulated sugar

1 large egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

120 ml buttermilk (milk, with 1tsp lemon added, left for 10 minutes so it begins to curdle; sounds gross, makes good cakes)

1 tablespoon liquid red food coloring

1/2 teaspoon white distilled vinegar

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Cream Cheese Frosting:

227g cream cheese, room temperature

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

60 grams icing sugar, sifted

160 ml whipping cream (make sure its cold, as this can turn very runny)

Method
(Preheat oven to 175 degrees C and have a 12 hold muffin tin lined)

1. In large bowl, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy
2. Mix in egg and then vanilla
3. In a cup, add food colouring to buttermilk, and in a separate bowl sift together flour, baking powder, salt and cocoa
4. Slowly alternate adding the flour and buttermilk to the butter mixture, beginning and ending with flour
5. In an eggcup, combine vinegar and baking soda, let it fizz and fold it into the cake batter quickly
6. Then quickly pour the batter into cases and smooth the tops
7. Bake for around 20 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean
8. For the frosting, beat the cream cheese till smooth
9. Add vanilla and sugar and beat until incorporated
10. Gradually add the cream and whisk till thick
11. You can then either pipe or spoon the frosting on to cakes

While my cupcakes were baking, I melted chocolate and added a little oil, put it into a piping bag and piped some valentine-y words and hearts onto my icing mat, put it in the fridge to set and then used them to decorate my cakes, but you can decorate them however you like.

Enjoy! x