Hey folks,

Hope you had a marvellous weekend?

On Friday, they had a Valentine’s themed bake-off at work and whilst I intended to take in some baked goodies with me and try to defend my bake-off champion title (I won at the Halloween themed one with my red velvet ghost cake), I ended up conking out as soon as I got home. Oops. #MajorFailure

Why are the bake-offs always on a Friday? Coming home after a long day on Thursday night and then hitting the kitchen to create something of a showstopper is far from ideal… Cooking dinner on Thursday night is pretty ambitious, baking is a whole other challenge!

As I had the ingredients to hand and a vision of what I wanted to create, I decided to just go with it and made these super cute, possibly borderline psychedelic, cupcakes this morning.

Aren’t they just adorable?!

Moist buttermilk chocolate and vanilla cakes, topped with real vanilla mascarpone cream frosting, decorated with a variety of chocolate, sprinkles, gummy sweets, berries and anything pink / red that I could find in the kitchen!

YUMMMM!

I think I sat there for about 10mins trying to decide which one I wanted.

Chocolate or vanilla?

Pink or white?

Chocolate, sprinkles, berries, raspberry sauce or gummy hearts?

Then I realised, it’s the weekend, calories don’t count on weekends.

Why should I limit myself to just one…?!

Ha.

Make these soon guys, you will not regret it!

P.S. Don’t forget the chocolate sales tomorrow. Because heart shaped chocolate is delicious every single day, not just 14th Feb!

Ingredients:

Chocolate cupcakes:

• 110g plain flour
• 160g caster sugar
• 50g cocoa
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 110g buttermilk
• 1 egg
• 50g salted butter, melted
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 100ml boiling water
• 1 heaped teaspoon of instant coffee

Vanilla cupcakes:

• 165g flour
• 200g caster sugar
• 110 salted butter at room temperature
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 120ml buttermilk
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Vanilla mascarpone whipped cream:

• 600ml double cream
• 250g mascarpone cheese
• 1 vanilla pod
• 85g sifted icing sugar
• 1 tsp pink food colouring

Decoration (all optional and customisable):

• Sprinkles
• Strawberries / raspberries
• Glace cherries
• Chocolate hearts
• Gummy hearts
• Raspberry sauce (I blitzed 150g raspberries, 30ml water and 50g sugar in a blender and then sifted out the seeds)

Instructions:

Chocolate cupcakes

1. Preheat oven to gas mark 5 and line your cupcake tin with 12 cases.
2. Add flour, sugar, baking soda and cocoa to a bowl and whisk to combine.
3. Add buttermilk, egg, vanilla extract and cooled butter to another bowl and whisk to combine.
4. Add the instant coffee to the boiling water and stir to combine.
5. Add the buttermilk mixture to the dry ingredients and stir before adding the coffee, mix well to combine.
6. Divide the cupcake batter into the prepared cases and cake for 15-20 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.
7. Once done, cool on a wire rack.

Vanilla cupcakes

1. Preheat oven to gas mark 5 and line your cupcake tin with 12 cases.
2. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy with an electric whisk.
3. Add vanilla extract and whisk again.
4. One by one add the eggs, whisking between each addition.
5. Sift the flour and baking soda and mix well.
6. Add a third of the flour mix to the sugar and butter mixture, whisk to combine, before adding half of the buttermilk.
7. Repeat this process until all your ingredients have been added and combined.
8. Divide the cupcake batter into the prepared cases and cake for 15-20 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.
9. Once done, cool on a wire rack.

Vanilla mascarpone whipped cream

1. Add the double cream into a large bowl. Whisk until bubbly.
2. Sift in icing sugar.
3. Slit a vanilla pod, scrape out the seeds and add to the cream and sugar.
4. Whisk for a further minute or two until combined.
5. Add mascarpone cheese and whisk until thick enough to pipe.
6. Split the frosting into two bowls, add 1 teaspoon of pink food dye to one batch and mix well to combine.

To assemble:

1. Once cupcakes have cooled, add the frosting to disposable bags and pipe a variety of colours / icing techniques over both sets of cupcakes.
2. Decorate as desired.

Enjoy

– Kay