Vanilla Cupcakes

YOU WILL NEED:

12 hole muffin tin, 12 large cupcake cases, mixing bowl, measuring jug, scales

200ml non-dairy milk (I used almond)

3 tsp cider vinegar

200g self raising flour

100g caster sugar

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

80ml vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

(see lower down for frosting ingredients, if needed) 

CUPCAKE METHOD:

1. Preheat the oven to 180*C and line your muffin tray with paper cases.

Line your muffin tray with paper cases

2. Measure the non-dairy milk in the jug and add the cider vinegar to it. Give it a stir and leave for 10 mins. 

Almond milk and vinegar mixture

3. Add all of the dry ingredients to the mixing bowl and stir to combine.

Dry ingredients

4. Add the milk/vinegar mixture, the oil and the vanilla to the dry ingredients and stir quickly.

Mix dry and wet ingredients together quickly!

5. Divide the mixture evenly between your 12 cases. Now, if you're a bit fussy like me, here's a tip! Place your muffin tray on your scales and press zero. Fill a cupcake case with around 43g of mixture. Press zero and repeat until all of the cases have an equal amount of mixture! This ensures that all of your cupcakes are an equal size! Genius, yes?!

Use the scales to get perfectly equal sized cupcakes!

6.Give the tray a little tap on the work top. The vinegar will have started reacting with the bicarb and baking powder already so tapping the bubbles out will slow the process down and prevent cupcakes that over rise then sink.

7. Bake for around 18-24 minutes until the tops spring back when gently pressed.

8. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 10 minutes before lifting the cupcakes out of the tray and leaving to cool completely on a wire rack.

Leave your bake cupcakes to cool for 10 mins before removing from the muffin tray

So! Your cupcakes are baked and are ready to decorate! You could add some jam or a splodge of melted chocolate to the top. If you would like to add buttercream, i've included my recipe below!

Buttercream Frosting Ingredients:

mixing bowl, piping bag, piping nozzle

100g Pure spread

100g Trex

400g icing sugar

2 tsps vanilla extract

Buttercream Frosting Method:

1. Use an electric mixer to combine the trex and Pure spread. Keep going until it's quite pale and creamy.

Combine the two fats

2. Add sifted icing sugar in small amounts to the bowl and combine. Now, it's best to do this by hand - your arms will ache, I guarantee, but tempting though it is to use your electric mixer, it will very likely end up broken as the mixture becomes thick and jams the whisk. I've broken so many mixers this way, and I never learn! 

Sift the icing sugar to avoid lumpy buttercream!

Don't break your mixer like I always do! Mix by hand!

3. Add the vanilla and combine.

*The buttercream can be thinned out with a little non-dairy milk if you add a bit too much icing sugar. See how it feels, it needs to be spreadable but not too wet especially if you're using edible paper images on top.

4. You can spread your buttercream on top of your cupcakes with a palette knife if you don't want to use a piping bag. They'll look just as good! If you do want to try piping, snip the end off your disposable piping bag and push your piping nozzle right down before filling with buttercream frosting. Any tip can be used, they all give different results, but to get a swirl like the ones you see in some of my pictures, use a Wilton 1M tip.

A Wilton 1M piping nozzle

5. To pipe swirls, start with the tip at the centre of your cupcake, and apply even pressure as you move around in a circle using the cupcake edge as a guide.

You can leave your cupcakes as they are or add sprinkles, sugar decorations, fruit, edible paper images, whatever you feel like really! Supermarkets have a vast range of decorations at reasonable prices! If you decide to use edible paper decorations, please see the pictures below for some inspiration.

Thanks for reading! Please let me know how you get on with the recipe! x