Baby Shower Cupcakes

Betty was on assignment. Well, in actual fact she gave me the assignment as she was invited to a baby shower for one of her best friends. I was to make cupcakes and had free range of what I could do and because the mother-to-be already knew her baby was a gorgeous little boy I decided I wanted the colour blue to appear somewhere, but where? Cupcake wrappers, icing or blue sprinkles perhaps? I did do a little research and there were so many great ideas out there and very clever ones I might add, whilst the flavour of the cupcakes were thought up by Betty.

The first was a caramel mud cake with a simple butter cream icing and the second one was to be a lemon one with some lemon curd put inside the actual cupcake itself. You will find the lemon cupcake recipe on our blog under "Lemon Meringue Cupcakes" but I didn't put the meringue on top of these particular cupcakes. A simple lemon cream cheese icing with a touch of yellow coloring to give it the coloured look I was after.

Caramel Mud Cake
125g butter, chopped coarsely
100g white eating chocolate, chopped coarsely
2/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup golden syrup
2/3 cup milk
1 cup plain flour
1/3 cup self-raising flour
1 egg
Butter cream
90g butter softened
1 cup icing sugar
1 tablespoon milk

Preheat oven to 170 degrees/340F. Line 12 hole muffin pan with paper cases.

Stir butter, chocolate, sugar, syrup and milk in small saucepan over low heat until smooth. Transfer mixture to medium bowl, cool 15 minutes.

Whisk sifted flours into chocolate mixture, then whisk in egg. Drop 1/4 cups of mixture into paper cases. Bake about 30 minutes. Stand cakes in pan 5 minutes before turning top-side up, onto wire rack to cool.

For the butter cream, beat butter in small bowl with electric mixer until as white as possible, beat in sifted icing sugar and milk, in two batches. (You can tint the icing with any colour you like).

For the decorations on top of this particular cupcake I made little blue rattles.

For the end of the rattle it was a little white chocolate called a Raffaello and the stick part was a packet of cake pop sticks that I cut to size. I then wrapped ribbon around each stick and used my hot glue gun so the ribbon didn't unwind.

For the Lemon cupcake I tinted the icing with a touch of yellow and used some persian fairy floss for the tops of each cake.

Persian fairy floss comes in a variety of different flavours and it's best arranged on your cupcake just before serving them.

Enjoy! M x