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Sunday 31 May 2015

Peanut Butter Cupcakes



If you like peanut butter then you're going to love these scrummy peanut butter cupcakes. This recipe makes approx 24 cupcakes. If you want to be more generous with the icing then you can double the icing recipe.

Ingredients

For the cupcakes:
270g butter (I use Stork)
100g peanut butter
250g caster sugar
4 eggs
250g self-raising flour
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1-2 tablespoons of milk

For the icing:
150g butter
60g peanut butter
250g icing sugar

For the topping:
100g unsalted peanuts, roasted and chopped


Method

1.  Pre-heat the oven to 180ºC, 160ºC fan, Gas mark 4 and line two 12 hole muffin tins with paper cases.
2.  Cream the Stork, peanut butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
3.  Add the eggs one at a time and mix well after each addition.
4.  Add the flour and the bicarb and mix until just combined.
5.  Spoon the mixture into the paper cases and bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes.
6.  To make the icing mix the butter, peanut butter and icing sugar together and pipe onto the cupcakes. Finally, put the chopped peanuts onto a plate and dip each cupcake into the mix so you have a generous amount of peanut crumbs on the top.



Thursday 7 May 2015

Babies, biscuits and cupcakes

Last week was all about babies, not only was there a new Princess born but more importantly my best friend had a beautiful baby boy! 





What better opportunity to bake some cute baby themed cupcakes. I bought these Baby Shower Cookie Cutters from Lakeland ages ago and have been waiting for an excuse to sue them. I was really impressed with them, they were really easy to use on biscuit dough and fondant.

I made the biscuits first, then cut out the shapes with fondant and stuck these onto the biscuits (they stick easily with a tiny bit of water). Finally I put them onto cupcakes.

I wanted to share the biscuit recipes with you as this is the best recipe if you want your biscuits to taste good and keep their shape.

Simple Vanilla Biscuits

Ingredients:
200g Stork
200g sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
425g plain flour

Method:
  1. Heat the oven to 180C/160C fan and line a couple of baking tins with baking paper.
  2. Cream the Stork and sugar in a bowl or food processor for a couple of minutes.
  3. Add the egg and vanilla and beat again briefly.
  4. Mix in the flour until a dough forms.
  5. Tip the dough onto a lightly floured surface and roll out using a rolling pin. If at this stage it feels a bit too sticky you can add more flour.
  6. Cut out the biscuit shapes and lay them on the baking trays.
  7. Put the biscuits in the fridge for 5 minutes before baking in the oven for 12 minutes or until starting to brown at the edges.
  8. Leave the biscuits to cool on a wire rack.