Making Cupcakes with the Girls (13 Dec 10)

Dear All

We had bought a ready-made purple icing tube, we made cupcakes on Monday, just a couple of days after the LC Christmas party. Sorry we didn't have time to make cookies for you all this year. We made cupcakes cos' it's faster & easier for me! Feli helped in creaming the butter & sugar and in spooning in the flour. Tiffany had tuition & was kinda upset she didn't get to help out in making the cupcakes. However, both of them had a fun time decorating the cupcakes.

Here's the result of our joint effort! Only Matthew & our chinese tuition teacher got to try the cakes the next day. Hope it was nice.

I had cut down the sugar as I figured the icing & mini marshmellows (courtesy of

Pat's game) would be quite sweet already.

Here's the recipe if you are interested.

Vanilla Butter Cupcakes

(Make about 20 - 23 depending on size of papercups)

Ingredients:

- 250g butter

- 300g self-raising flour

- 250g sugar (I used about 210-220g sugar)

- 5 eggs

- 2 teaspoons vanilla essence

For decoration:

- 1 tube ready-made icing

- mini marshmellows

- sprinkles of various shapes (flowers, hearts, circles etc)

Method:

1) Cream butter & sugar till creamy

2) Add in vanilla essence and eggs 1 at a time, and stir them in.

3) Add in flour 2 tablespoons at a time and stir them in.

Pre-heat oven at 180 degrees celsius (my oven is manual, or I heat it up for about 5min before putting the cupcakes in)

Bake each batch of about 12 cupcakes at a time for about 18-20 minutes for each batch.

Once they are quite cooled (the girls are impatient & can't wait till they are fully cooled down), squeeze on your icing in whatever pattern you want. Then decorate with marshmellows and dash of sprinkles.

This is the first time I've used ready-made icing. They are great & easy to use. I got mine from Cold Storage. After exposure to air for some time, the icing hardens to a nice crunchy texture. For the marshmellows, I cut them in half cross-sectionally and then squeeze the 2 ends into petal shapes.

Surprisingly, we finished baking & decorating everything in about 2+hs only!

Love

Theresa