sarah's birthday cupcakes

Susannah Blake and Tarek Malouf were my trusty baking companions for the weekend's baking. Even when the industrial oven at Church that was going to give life to my cupcakes failed me, these brilliant bakers did not.

Their recipes stayed true to their word and produced beautiful cakes. 

From The Hummingbird Bakery cookbook I baked...

Black Bottomed Cupcakes (find the recipe over here at my much neglected baking blog)

and 

Carrot Cake (I adapted this recipe to include orange because it goes so brilliantly with carrots, and threw in raisins instead of nuts)

From Susannah Blake's Afternoon Tea Parties I made Coffee & Walnut Cake

As two of the three recipes were for cake, I simply made the quantities stated plus an extra half to make approximately 19- 21 cupcakes per recipe.

For the fourth flavour I made these chocolate classics with this chocolate buttercream frosting which I love, because it has a slight malty taste to it, provided by a dash of ovaltine (well, 50g, so a little more than a dash). The quantities of frosting will make enough to frost about 30 cupcakes.

Here's the recipe for the Coffee & Walnut Cupcakes...

ingredients:

270g unsalted butter at room temp

270g caster sugar

4 eggs

3 tsp instant coffee dissolved in 1.5 tbsp hot water

60g walbut pieces

for the frosting:

325g marscarpone

125g icing sugar

2 1/4 tsp instant coffee dissolved in 2 1/4 tsp hot water

walnut halves, to decorate

1) Preheat the oven to 180C / Gas 4 / 350F

2) Cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.

3) Beat in the eggs one at a time

4) Sift in the flour and stir by hand to combine

5) Fold in the coffee & walnuts

6) Spoon heaped dessertspoons of mixture into a muffin tray lined with paper cases

7) Bake for 20 - 25 mins until golden and springy then transfer to a wire cooling rack

for the frosting...

Beat all of the ingredients together then either spread or pipe onto your cupcakes in whatever fashion you desire. 
(Maybe avoid using a round piping nozzle like I used, as someone commented that they looked like something that you would never want to eat...!)

I transported the cupcakes safely in trays purchased from here  and served the cakes on slate tiles, labelled so that the party guests would know what they were eating.

I added my own very small touch to the boxes with custom stickers from moo.com.

If you would like the recipes for carrot & orange cupcakes, I will happily post it over on my baking blog, but did not want to inundate this post with numerous recipes.


It was such an honour to be asked by Sarah's husband to bake cupcakes for her as a surprise & I loved seeing them all lined up in neat rows in their boxes - such a satisfying sight.