Have you followed my recipe for the best most moist cupcakes on the planet, and then a unicorn flew over and pooped on them? I'm here to help! Eat them as fast as you can! They're not just safe to eat, they're delicious. It says so on the lable! 🤣🤣
This past Sunday, we were delighted to spend the day with @JuliaDick and @JasperDick and their absolutely ridiculously gorgeous little girl, Maddy. All of us, including @AimeLudick, @ZakLudick, @Matthew-Williams and @MerenLudick and I were too busy swimming and eating cupcakes to take photos of our incredible day, but I did make an effort to record the process of how I made my divine cupcakes.
I posted a vanilla cupcake recipe previously, but realised, when making these on Saturday evening, that I left out half the method and ingredients.
Whoops.
Please see below for the best EVER recipe and method for vanilla cupcakes you've ever tried (Unicorn not included).
Moist Vanilla Cupcakes with Purple Glitter Unicorn Frosting
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.
Utensils:
*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
*A bowl for preparing your coloured icing.
*A measuring jug or cup
Cupcake Ingredients (American cups)
*325g (2.5 cups) all purpose flour
*420g (2 cups) brown sugar
*3 teaspoons baking powder
*1 teaspoon salt
*240ml (1cup) milk
*120ml (1/2 cup) sunflower oil
*1 tablespoon vanilla extract/ vanilla essence
*240ml (1 cup) of water
**Icing Ingredients: **
*500g butter - must be soft/ room temperature
*500g icing sugar
*1 tablespoon vanilla essence
Recipe Hint: use the voices of your ancestors to guide you as to how much vanilla you want. I usually er on the side of generosity BUT DON'T go and use the whole bottle though. It doesn't taste very nice if you drink it directly from the bottle so it won't taste nice if you throw the whole thing into your icing either🤣).
*Blue and red food colouring = purple
food colouring hint: the cheaper liquid was good for this recipe because we wanted to achieve a more pastel colour. If you want your icing to come out brighter, I recommend you use food colouring gel instead.
Cupcake Method:
Preheat the oven to 180deg Celcius.
Method Hint: Spray your trays with spray and cook. This will help the holders stay in place and IF your cupcakes rise to much, it will mean spillovers or muffintops wont stick and they'll still come out.
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.
Icing Method:
Add the icing sugar, vanilla essence and butter and food colouring (I used blue and red to achieve purple) into a bowl and beat on high until completely creamed and smooth. If it's a bit stiff, you can add a dash of milk. DON'T use too much milk. You don't want runny icing.
The reason my icing ended up looking unicornpoopish is because I realised that my piping fittings did not match my piping bag.I will need to go scratch around at my moms place to find the rest of the sets. I filled my piping bag and piped the icing on without an attachment. Believe it or not, piping like this is MUCH easier than trying to spoon icing on.
I love visiting the baking shop when I can and people love to gift me with baking stuff. This means I always have a variety of sprinkles and glitter on hand for any last minute cupcake emergencies. For these cupcakes, I used edible snow glitter and metallic silver/ blue/ purple/ green and white sugar balls as well as pink and purple sprinkles.
There is not even one photo of anyone eating one. They were GONE long before I had the chance to think about that!
