Sunflower Cupcakes

Hey guys!

I've been a very busy lady this weekend. My best friend Lucy came to stay and we have done a LOT of shopping :) It was more of a clothes related shop, though I couldn't resist picking up 2 packs of Barbie glittery candles for my lovely housemates birthday cakes. These were a bargain at 69p a pack from B and M Bargains:

I have also been busy baking a Carrot Cake for my boyfriend's flatmate's birthday. I LOVE making carrot cake and have to resist eating it all day. Luckily I made some cupcakes for the girlies to munch on this weekend, so we haven't had to look and long :). I will post about the carrot cake in the next week, but not until I have given Chris his cake (it might just spoil the suprise :p)

Anyways back to the blog. For my second blog post I am going to blog about the yummy cupcakes I did for Darren's Birthday. I originally planned to make regular vanilla cupcakes and present them in a pretty box but I got a little inspired by Spring coming up.

The ingredients I used were:

• 6oz caster sugar
• 6oz self raising flour (sieved)
• 6oz stork butter
• 3 eggs (beaten)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence

This is a typical victoria sponge mix, and can be used to make a cake. The steps for baking are pretty basic :) :

 1)Cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy and light. 

2) Then alternating between flour and egg add a bit at a time and mix well. 

3) Then to finish off add the vanilla essence.

(If you want the cake to really rise add half a teaspoon of baking powder to the mix)

4) I cooked them on around 170 degrees for approximately 25 minutes. 

Using a muffin tray the above ingredients make around 8 - 10 cupcakes. 

As Spring was my inspiration I thought I'd give some flowers ago and hope Darren wouldn't mind haha. I've tried roses before so was thinking of something different and bright. I whipped up some yellow butter cream using the normal ingredients and tried out an alternative nozzle on my icing syringe.

Ingredients for Butter Cream:

• 115g Stork Butter
• 265g Icing Sugar (sieved)
• 1/2 tsp of Vanilla Extract
• 1 cap of Yellow Food Colouring

1) Cream the butter.

2) Add the icing sugar a little at a time and stir.

3) Add the vanilla extract and food colouring and give it a good stir.

Syringe and Nozzle

As the nozzle was flat on one side and had 3 ridges on the other I made several thick lines (petals)  coming out from the center of each cupcake, making sure they each joined up on each side.  I then added chocolate chips to the center of each cake to make the middle of the flower. As these were dark it gave a sunflowery look:

Sunflower Cupcake.

I then gave the cakes a quick sprinkle of gold fairy dust (edible glitter) purchased from Ebay and VOILA  :D:

 



Finished Product <3



I think it would be good to experiment with different nozzles to create different styled petals and use other coloured food colouring to see what kind of flowers I can make. But thats for another time :)

I WILL PLACE ALL RECIPES I MENTION ON THE BAR AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE, WITH THE EQUIPMENT LIST AND COOKING TIMES :D SO SEE ABOVE FOR AN EASY TO FOLLOW SUNFLOWER BUNS RECIPE :D



As yellows, oranges and bright colours are in the summer spring/fashion trends at the mo, Rosie Apple is planning  to do some sunflower-esque nail art, so check her out over the next few days guys.

Anyway Ciao for now,

Samantha Who (loves to bake)