Ah – you’re daring enough to invite my family over to your home for tea? Let me bake my simple cupcakes to share.

My dear readers, if I, a mother of four under four can whip up a dozen of these beauties within 45 minutes (baked, iced, decorated and dishes washed); I assure you, they are indeed simple cupcakes. Don’t let its’ simplicity fool you. This humble cupcake is deliciously moist and fluffy, and the buttercream icing – well, it’s buttercream icing – need I say more?

Ingredients

Cupcakes:
2 cups self raising flour
1/2 cup sugar
150g soft butter
3 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla paste

Buttercream Icing:
150g butter (room temp)
1 teaspoon vanilla paste
2 cups icing sugar

Method

Preheat oven to 180C.
Line a cupcake silicone baking tray with patty pans.

Dump the flour, sugar, butter (cubed), eggs, milk and vanilla into a blender/mixer and blend/mix.

Fill the patty pans only half way with the mixture and bake for 15 minutes.

While the cupcakes are baking, make your butter cream icing.
Wash and dry your blender/mixer.
Place butter, vanilla and icing sugar and beat to a soft peak consistency (i.e. when you form a peak the tip of it curls over slightly).

When your cupcakes are baked and cooled, decorate with butter cream icing and whatever tickles your fancy (and happens to be in your pantry).

Enjoy!

The post The Simple Cupcake by Pauline appeared first on Lessons Learnt Journal.

The recipe is from Bakerella’s Cake Pops: Tips, Tricks, and Recipes for Irresistible Mini Treats.

We had a few deviations from Bakerella’s original recipe. For starters, instead of baking a cake from scratch, we used a Green’s chocolate cake mix for the cake. Saves loads of time. The cake needs to be cold when you start the cake pop making, so it’s a good idea to bake ahead of time and keep it in the fridge for a few hours.

We crumbled the cake.

Added chocolate frosting (we used Betty Crocker’s ready made frosting instead of making it from scratch).

Rolled them into balls and popped them into the freezer for about 10 minutes.

Here’s where we also deviated from Bakerella’s recipe. Instead of using a flower-shaped cookie cutter to mold the cake pops into cupcake-shaped-cakes (say that 10 times quickly!), we used this nifty cupcake mold. (I had a go at using the flower-shaped cookie cutter, and trust me, the cupcake mold is much easier).

Awww they’re so cute – and we haven’t finished them yet.

We used Wilton’s Candy Melts and although yummy, we think the constancy is too thick for the delicate detailing required on these cake pops. Sadly, our cupcake cake pops lost their cupcake shapes post icing. Nonetheless, we iced away. First the bottoms of the cupcakes. (Stick the pops in after you’ve iced the cake).

Then ice the tops.

Quickly decorate with sprinkles and mini m&m’s before the icing hardens.

Stick the cake pops into some floral oasis, or if you’re like me and don’t have any, use old play dough in a tub or a utensils holder.

I will be the first to admit, making cake pops can be fiddly and more time consuming than your average cake,

but it’s easier (and less messy) for kids to eat and a perfect mouthful of deliciousness for kids and adults alike.

Can’t wait for our next cake pop making session.

The post Cupcake Cake Pops by Pauline appeared first on Lessons Learnt Journal.