As I always say, it feels like forever since I've properly connected with this blog. And when I say this, I truly mean it.
Today's introduction to my recipe is different to my normal opening as I believe I owe all of you an explanation for my lack of consistency, effort and most importantly...my lack of baking!!!
Over the last few months, life has been extremely tough, tremendous, hectic and so much more. Unfortunately, a close family friend of mine had passed away from brain cancer, I've fallen behind in pretty much every subject at school and my mentality WAS rapidly dropping into a fairly relentless and morose state of mind. Being in a rough patch, mentally, certainly isn't the easiest thing to conquer, and is much harder when you have an weekly audience to please, and work to complete, and exams to participate in and family dramas occurring. So as you imagine, a couple months ago, there was near enough no way I was even feeling motivated to upload entertaining and satisfying content, and even bake. Although I was extremely unmotivated to blog, I thought if I don't, I'll be letting you all down. But what I didn't realise was how much I was letting myself down.
I was posting incomplete, half-done content, in the expectation I'll find time in the week to log back online and complete my post. Only I didn't. And so this pattern of uploading insufficient content would continue at first for two weeks and then slowly progress to a month and before I knew it, my blog anniversary had arrived and I still hadn't had one complete blog post since August. At that point of reaching my third blogging anniversary, I felt too embarrassed and shamed to even come back on here and put things right, and so more time passed and nothing was posted on here.
However...
I'm happy to say that despite finding life hard before, it's better now. I think it's safe to say I've overcome my dark patch in my head, I'm gradually climbing back to where I need to be academically and lastly...I'm baking again! This leads me to say, here's my recipe on how to make very simple, beginner vanilla cupcakes with buttercream.
For the cupcakes, you'll require:
110g of butter or margarine, softened and at room temperature
110g of caster sugar
2 free-range eggs, lightly beaten(however I only used one extra-large egg)
1 tsp of vanilla extract
110g of self-raising flour
1-2 tbsp of milk
As for the buttercream, you'll need:
140g of softened butter
280g of icing sugar
1-2 tbsp of milk
a few drops of vanilla extract
How-to-bake:
Firstly, pre-heat the oven to 180℃/160℃ fan/350⚬F/Gas Mark 4. Line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper cases(I used orange ones).
Next, cream together the butter and sugar together into a bowl until pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, a little at a time before eventually stirring in the vanilla extract.
After that, fold in the flour,using a large metal spoon adding a small quantity of milk up until the mixture is of dropping consistency.
Spoon the cupcake mix into the paper cases until they're half full.
Bake these in the oven for 10-15 minutes(it took me 18 minutes, to ensure the cupcakes were of a perfect golden colour but still stick to the guidelines of the recommended baking time).
Set the cupcakes aside to cool for 10 minutes before removing from the tin, to a wire rack.
In the meantime, for the buttercream, beat the butter in a large bowl until really pale and soft. Add in around half of the icing sugar, beating this until smooth.
Then add in the remaining icing sugar, along with one tablespoon of milk, until the mix is smooth and creamy.
Finally, MY FAVOURITE PART, spoon the icing into a piping bag with a star or round nozzle and pipe the icing using a spiraling motion in a large swirl.
Here are the photos of all the steps, for those who are stuck:
Although I usually do a "before-you-go" at the end, I'm going to leave this post at this or else this will be take too long to read over
Goodbye for now and hopefully I'll post again next Saturday.
#sweetreats xx
