I seem to be gripped by baking fever of late, much to the delight of my gorgeous family! @AimeLudick alerted me to the fact that it happens to be pride month! Not that I needed much of a push, I'm blaming this one on her as she wanted to celebrate and spread the love by making cupcakes for school. What kind of a mom would I be if I said no to that? 🤣💘
I am so proud of my kids and how socially conscious and full of love they all are. As much as they drive me nuts, they balance it out with all the love they have to give and really, by just being their incredible individual selves.
@AimeLudick chose the Bi-Flag colours, which meant we only needed blue and red food colouring, but where oh where would I find the perfect vanilla cupcake recipe? I've only ever baked vanilla cake out of the box, and it's sad. I've said it before and I'll say it again, there is no place for sad food in this house. I don't care how good the quality of the box is supposed to be. It always tastes like the love is missing, so I went on a mission and found this OUTSTANDING recipe. It was so good, that I am adding it to my family recipe book and I have been absolutely itching to share it with you guys too.
The recipe is super simple and produces the most gorgeously fluffy and moist vanilla cupcakes you could dream of. With icing to die for and colours so pretty, these cupcakes were really such a beautiful representation of the celebration of Pride Month.
Recipe hint: I treat vanilla essence the same way I treat garlic: whatever the recipe says, I always add MORE. These cupcakes were so fragrant you could smell the vanilla in my kitchen for days after baking. After biting into the cupcake, all my senses were overwhelmed by the delicate texture of the cupcakes and the incredibly beautiful vanilla fragrance.
***Enough torture now, let me train you to make your own!
This recipe makes 24 cupcakes.***
**Cupcake Ingredients: **
420g sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
240ml milk
120ml sunflower oil
1 tablespoon vanilla extract/ vanilla essence
1 cup of water
**Icing Ingredients: **
220g butter - must be soft/ room temperature
500g icing sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla essence
Blue and red food colouring
food colouring hint: the cheaper liquid was good for this recipe because we wanted to achieve pink and not red. We were going for pastel colours, rather than bright colours. If you want your icing to come out a proper red, I recommend you use food colouring gel instead.
Tools:
2 x muffin/ cupcake trays (2 x12's = 24)
24 Cupcake holders/ baking liners
2 large mixing bowls
An electronic hand mixer
A wooden spoon
A sieve
3 bowls for preparing your different coloured icings and a separate teaspoon for each.
A measuring jug or cup
Cupcake Method:
Preheat the oven to 180deg Celcius.
Line the baking trays with your cupcake holders/ liners
Combine the milk, oil, eggs and vanilla extract in a bowl and cream together.
In a separate bowl, sift together the four, sugar, baking powder, and salt.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well, slowly adding the water until well combined. Never overmix. This will cause your cake to flop/ not rise. The batter for this recipe will be surprisingly thin. This is a GOOD thing and an indication of how light and fluffy your cupcakes will be.
Fill your cupcake holders, evenly distributing batter. There should be enough to fill the cups to about 2/3, leaving space for the cupcakes to rise.
Place in the oven for roughly 20 minutes, or until you can gently put a toothpick all the way through and have it come out clean.
Once done, you can leave them to cool partially in the baking trays, and then remove them onto cooling racks.
While those are cooling off, you can prepare your icing.
Decorating hint: I love going to the baking shop and buying sprinkles of all sorts in bulk,0 because it means, when inspiration strikes, i can whip out my box of glitter and sparkles and be ready for anything from Christmas biscuits to octopus cakes to rainbow pride cupcakes. Having a well-stocked baking cupboard is so incredibly helpful. I like knowing I can just whip up a miracle at amoment'ss notice! Very important when you have three ravenous preeteens/ teenagers in the house!
Icing Method:
Add the icing sugar, vanilla essence and butter into a bowl and beat on high until completely creamed and smooth.
Divide your icing into three separate bowls, adding 1 teaspoon of blue food colouring for the blue icing, 1 teaspoon of red colouring for the pink icing and about half a teaspoon of blue and red to the third bowl for your purple icing. Adding too much of the liquid colouring to your icing will make your icing runny and messy and impossible to pipe or mold. I did not have piping bags (they're still at my mom's place) so we did all the decorating using teaspoons).
We googled the flag to make sure we got the colour order right and then realised we had quite a lot of leftover purple icing, which I spooned on in the middle, decorating with silver balls and little red hearts.
This was such a lovely bonding experience with my beautiful daughter. The cupcakes turned out absolutely beautifully and tasted exactly as they should: like they were made with love!
