It’s not over yet, brace yourselves for more cupcakes in celebration of National Cupcake Week! My little boy finished his very first full day at school yesterday, so my little girl and I baked some cakes and prepared a little picnic for his return home.
We made these yummy mini cupcakes to a recipe sent to me by Melissa on behalf of Philadelphia. The original recipe uses caster sugar and the finely grated rind of an orange, but instead, I chose to use cinnamon sugar in the cake batter as I thought it would go well with the Philly cream cheese in the topping. If you don’t have cinnamon sugar just use plain caster sugar and add a teaspoon of cinnamon to your flour when it goes in.
Using little sweets is an easyway to decorate little cakes, we also sometimes use smarties.
They also look just as pretty without the sweets, but they aren’t nearly as much fun for little fingers who want to pick!
And, as I discovered myself with a nice cup of tea, the Philly frosting also paired well with a couple of late Autumn raspberries. Well, the first week of school was hard for me too!
A little thank you also goes to the lovely Zita of Zizi’s Adventures who very kindly gave me the two little place mats you see on the first photo when we met for the first time at Food Blogger Connect this summer.
Diddy Philly CupcakesRecipe courtesy of PhiladelphiaPrep time: 15 minutesCook time: 15 minutes
Ingredients:
125 g butter or margarine125 g caster sugar or cinnamon sugar2 medium eggs125 g self-raisingFinely grated rind of 1 orange1 tbsp skimmed milk
150 g Philadelphia Light50 g icing sugarSome colourful cake decorations
Method:
1. Beat butter and caster sugar or cinnamon sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time then fold in the flour, orange rind and the milk.
2.Line mini muffin tin with mini cupcake cases. Spoon the mixture into the cases filling about half full. Bake at 180⁰C, Gas mark 4 for about 12-15 minutes or until golden and risen. Leave to cool.
3.Meanwhile make the frosting by beating the Philly and icing sugar together. When the cakes are completely cold, spread some Philly frosting over each of the cup cakes and decorate as liked.
Tips
This mixture may make as many as 36 mini cups cakes depending on their size or alternatively use the mixture to make around 12 usual size cup cakes. The larger cup cakes will take a few extra minutes to cook. Eat same day or store in the fridge over night. I got 24 mini cakes and 4 large cakes from the mixture.
If you don’t have cinnamon sugar, use caster sugar and add one teaspoon of cinnamon into the cake mix with the flour.
I mentioned in my previous cupcake post that a little tip I picked up on a course was to use a piping bag to pipe the batter into the cases – this is how your cases should look if you do this. Ensure that the piping bag just touches the centre of the case as you squirt a bit in…this amount per case will give you perfect little cupcakes ready to decorate.
Also…if you want flatter tops use margarine in place of butter.
If you have little helpers, they’ll prefer the option of just eating most of the mixture and making a mess with the rest! My little girl just swiped the packets of sweets and went to hide instead.
Have you been baking cupcakes this week? Is so, what’s your favourite flavour combination?
For more cupcake recipes, such as Mini Carrot Cupcakes, visit the Philly Site and look out for tips on the Philly Facebook Page!