Mint chocolate cupcakes

I made these yesterday for my sister's birthday celebrations tonight, and they were so delicious! Chocolate and mint is always the perfect match, and with a mint aero bubble on top, what could be better? These look really cute and taste surprisingly light and refreshing. I used a large star piping nozzle that I recently brought off Amazon and you can really tell the difference - I think these look a lot more professional than previous cupcakes I have made - it's definitely worth the money. These would also look good decorated with after eight mints.

For the chocolate sponges (makes about 24)

- 225 margarine/butter (or both)

- 225g caster sugar

- 4 eggs, beaten

- 225g self raising flour

- 1/2 tsp baking powder

- 2 tbsp semi skimmed milk

- 1 tsp vanilla essence

- 4 tbsp cocoa powder

For the peppermint buttercream

- 150g unsalted butter

- 225g icing sugar

- 2 tbsp hot milk

- 4 tsp peppermint extract (according to taste)

- few drops of green food colouring

- mint aero bubbles, to decorate

1. Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 4 / 180 degrees. Line a few cupcake trays with cupcake cases.

2. Beat together the marg/butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the eggs, adding flour occasionally if curdling occurs.

3. Sift the remaining flour, baking powder and cocoa powder into the bowl, then gradually whisk in the milk and vanilla essence.

4. Spoon into the cupcakes cases and bake in the oven for around 20 minutes. Leave to cool on a cooling tray.

5. For the butter cream, cream together the butter, sugar and milk until smooth. Add the peppermint extract and food colouring and stir thoroughly. Taste and if necessary add more of the peppermint.

6. Using a disposable piping bag and a large star nozzle, pipe the buttercream on top of each cupcakes - be generous! Place a mint aero bubble on top and voila!

I ran out of buttercream and so decorated the remaining 3 cupcakes like this, ha ha ha it makes me laugh:

Enjoy :)

Coffee and mascarpone cupcakes

I made these for my mum's birthday since she loves coffee cake, like this tiramisu cake which I made for mother's day here! I usually always just stick to buttercream to ice cupcakes (I would've done coffee buttercream for these), but I thought a cream cheese frosting would be a nice change. It does mean you should probably keep them in the fridge though, as the mascarpone might go off otherwise, but I found that if anything it made the sponge more moist so keeping them cold worked great! You can decorate these with anything you like - walnuts would look really good placed on top and are the perfect match for coffee, but none of us really like walnuts so that's why I didn't do that. We tried to find chocolate coffee beans but couldn't which is a shame because they would have looked perfect. In the end I used these chocolate hearts which are really cute - they came from Sainsbury's, I think they were the Silver Spoon brand. These decorations will be particularly perfect for Valentine's day. The cupcake cases are from Ikea last year so they probably don't do them anymore. I love the colours and designs but always get annoyed because they're tall, slim cupcake cases, and I don't have a suitable cupcake tin to bake them in, so they lose their shape and it means the sponge doesn't go higher then the case. This really annoys me because I don't think the cupcakes look as good aha. Sorry for the long introduction! In short, these cupcakes make a really nice change and are super moist and flavoursome so definitely give them a try if you like coffee flavoured cakes.

Makes about 12
- 100g butter, softened
- 100g soft brown sugar
- 100g self-raising flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 2 large eggs
- 2tsp coffee mixed with 100ml water
- pinch of salt
- dash of milk

For the mascarpone frosting
- 200ml mascarpone
- 2 tbsp soft brown sugar
- 1 tbsp icing sugar
- the remaining coffee

1. re-heat the oven to gas mark 4 / 180 degrees, and line a cupcake tin with 12 cupcake cases.
2. Cream together the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs and fold in the flour and baking powder.
3. Stir in the coffee, a pinch of salt and a dash of milk until creamy.
4. Spoon the mixture into cupcake cases and bake in the oven for around 20 minutes, or until golden.
5. Leave to cool on a wired rack.
6. Meanwhile, to make the frosting, whisk together the mascarpone, sugars and coffee. Once the cakes are cool, spread on top.

 7. Decorate the cupcakes with anything you like - chocolate hearts, coffee beans, walnuts, grated chocolate etc etc. Don't forget to store in the fridge!

Enjoy :)

Celebration cupcakes

I made these cupcakes for my friends 21st (and her Dad's 50th) - it's the recipe I always use, just plain vanilla sponge, with vanilla buttercream but thought I would just share the pictures because they're so pretty and sparkly! You can find the recipe here :)

I used a lustre spray for some of the cupcakes, which just gives the icing a really nice shimmer. I think I bought this at David Shuttle but I'm sure you can get them in any cake shop. It's really easy to use and gives such a professional finish.

You can see the effect of this pearl lustre spray below - it just leaves a really glossy finish, which was perfect as the party was themed black and silver - hence the cupcake cases as well. The chocolate letters I used on these cupcakes I think were just from a supermarket, probably Tesco or Sainsbury's.

On all the other cupcakes where I piped the buttercream, I topped with edible glitter dust which I absolutely love. My friends mum bought these from a cake shop for me to use. They're from the range 'edable art' and are in the colours disco silver, and disco black hologram. The silver is so sparkly and more versatile as it would go with any colour icing and is just more simple and elegant. The disco black is also really pretty however, since it has different shimmers of colour - I would recommend both. They were £2.40 each which seems quite pricey for such small pots, but there's so much glitter in there that you probably would never need to re-purchase them!

Below shows the silver glitter, and the picture below you can see the black with the different colours shimmering.

Hope this has given you some ideas of how to decorate cupcakes to give a classy, simple look - they are perfect for any celebration, especially something like New Year's Eve as well. 

Enjoy :)

Mocha cupcakes

I made these today for my dad's birthday celebration, but I think they would be more fitting for Valentine's day!

They taste absolutely delicious; moist sponge, creamy frosting and strong chocolatey coffee flavour, what more could you want from a cupcake!?

I am aware some of my decorations look a bit naff - I was going for the chocolate lattice effect but I didn't have a piping bag, so had to make do with a teaspoon and a cocktail stick haha...

They would look amazing with the frosting piped through a nozel and a cocoa or coffee bean placed on top - simple and sophisticated! Or for Valentine's day a chocolate heart placed on top, as suggested in the recipe.


I got the recipe from my Hummingbird Bakery book 'Cake Days', which I would highly recommend.

I can't wait to make the apple crumble cupcakes and their famous whoopie pies so watch this space!

- 240ml milk (I used semi-skimmed)
-15g hot chocolate powder
- 5g instant espresso powder (or coffee granules)
- 80g butter
- 280g caster sugar
- 240g plain flour
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2 large eggs

Heat oven to gas 5 (190c) and line a muffin tin with 12 muffin cases.
Warm the milk and mix in the hot chocolate powder and coffee powder until dissolved.

Meanwhile, mix all the other ingredients, apart from the eggs, together by hand or using an electric whisk.

Whisk the eggs into the mocha flavoured milk and combine with the other mixture, until smooth.

Spoon the mixture into the cases and bake for 18-20 minutes or until well risen and springy to the touch.

<--- they should look something like this (cupcake cases from Ikea)

 - 50ml milk
- 30g hot-chocolate powder
- 500g icing sugar (Only used about 400g)
- 160g butter (It only needed about 120g)
- anything you want to decorate (I used milk and white chocolate)

Mix the warm milk and powder together until dissolved. Cream together the icing sugar and butter, then stir in the chocolate milk until smooth. Simply spread on top of the cakes or pipe.

 <--- This was just about the only successful chocolate lattice I managed to make!

This is what the cupcakes looked like - they look even better when bitten in to!

Hope you enjoy :)
(all of these pictures were taken by me apart from the cookbook)