Tags
Baking on a rainy day, Chocolate chip and orange cupcakes, Elderflower and vanilla cupcakes, Elderflower cordial baking, Elderflower cupcakes, Pip and Posy The Scary Monster
It was a rainy day and Posy was a little bit bored. She decided to do some cooking…
And so starts one of Molly’s favourite books (Pip and Posy – The Scary Monster). What better to do on a rainy day than to bake some cupcakes together. I’m not sure we could sustain this for every rainy day over our god-forsaken supposed summer, but today it really did help lift our spirits.
Later that day we were to go to a birthday party for Molly’s friend Izzy and so I thought it’d be nice to take some mini cupcakes over. I presumed that as they were mini they wouldn’t do much harm in terms of the sugar rush. I stupidly piled on the icing though, which meant that Molly stayed up partying most of the night. Woo.
I made two batches, one for the adults (elderflower and vanilla) and one for the kids (chocolate and orange). They both worked out very well, especially as I didn’t follow a recipe and I spilt a lot of the cordial and cocoa powder into the mix (the hazards of cooking with a toddler – some of the measurements are approximations). I’d used elderflower in desserts before, and given this latest homemade batch of cordial, I thought I’d give it a whirl in cakes. Although I have to admit the chocolate ones were a bigger hit both with Molly and myself.
For The Main Mix – makes 24 mini cupcakes or 12 medium sized ones
75g butter
150g golden caster sugar
1 egg
125ml whole milk
175g self-raising flour
1 ½ tspn baking powder
Cream the sugar with the butter using a spoon (or get Molly to, or use something electric). Add the milk bit by bit, then beat in the egg. Next sift the flour and baking powder, and fold the mixture until mixed (but don’t over mix). Then divide the mix in half.
For Two Separate Mixes:
1st Batch
3 tblsp elderflower cordial
½ tspn vanilla extract
2nd Batch
Good sprinkling of chocolate chips
½ tspn orange extract
I then used colour-coded cupcake holders so I’d know which ones were the chocolate ones if no chips were visible. Molly enjoyed plopping the mix into the cases (as per the aforementioned story) as well as the obligatory licking of spoon.
For the Icing
250g icing sugar
85g butter
Cream together using spoon and hands (you could use something electric here). Halve the mixture.
For Two Separate Mixes:
1st Batch
3 tblsp elderflower cordial
Mix with spoon until light and fluffy.
2nd Batch
25g cocoa powder
½ tspn orange extract
2 tblsp whole milk
Mix in the cocoa powder first, then the orange extract and then the milk to loosen the mixture up until it’s light and fluffy.
To Decorate:
I wanted nice swirly icing, but I don’t have the tools (i.e. any piping nozzles), nor could I be bothered to make a piping bag. What I did was just get a teaspoon, and plonk about a teaspoon of icing onto the mini-cupcakes, and swirl it around to the top so that a peak was created. I then decorated with some watercress flowers (as had run out of elderflower).
Poor old Molly had to go down for her nap before the cakes were baked, but upon waking her first word was “cakes?”…