Cute Cake Creations

During my third year at university the work has just piled up quicker than I could ever imagine. And my way of coping has been to bake…yep my guilty pleasure is to bake naughty little treats. So I thought I’d share a quick and easy recipe for you guys to try out.

You will need the following ingredients:

150g of caster sugar

150g of butter at room temperature

150g of plain flower

2 eggs

1 tea spoon of vanilla essence

3-4 food colours

Begin by pre-heating your oven to 180C, line your baking tin using margarine and then place the cupcake cases. This recipe makes approximately 12 cupcakes.

In a bowl mix together the butter and caster sugar until it’s light and fluffy. I tend to use the electric mixer to do this, but a wooden spoon does the job just as well. Beat in the eggs one at a time and then add the vanilla essence.

The flour then needs to be folded in using a metal or wooden spoon. Do this until the mixture is a soft consistency dropping off the spoon. Separate the mixture into 3 or4 bowls depending on how many food colouring agents you have. Add in the colours until you are happy with the colour in each bowl.

Take your first bowl of mixture and place a small amount in each cupcake case, enough so that it covers the base of the case. Take your second colour and place on top of the first, spreading it to the edges. Be careful not to mix the colours as they will blend and you won’t get the end result. Do the same using the rest of the bowls of mixture.  Don’t fill the cases to the top as the mixture will rise in the oven, so leave enough room.

Put the tray into the oven for 15 minutes to cook. Once they are cooked, take them out and leave to cool for half an hour. You can check if they are cooked by sticking in a knife, if the knife comes out clean they are cooked. Once the cakes have cooled you can begin to decorate, if they aren’t left long enough to cool the heat from the cake will melt the icing.

 I personally use Betty Crocker’s buttercream icing to decorate my cakes, simply because it tastes so nice and it’s quick and easy to use. It costs around £2.50 from any of your standard supermarkets. You can make your own piping bag by using a small plastic bag, add in the icing, shape like a cone and cut off the end. Otherwise a knife can be used to spread the icing on top of each cupcake.

I like to add a bit of colouring to the icing just to make it more fun but you can leave it plain if you prefer. Once you have decorated your cakes you can get stuck in…to the washing up! Enjoy J

By Amrit Pnaiser