RAINBOW CUPCAKES
January 15, 2018
Sorry this is our first post of the year already two weeks in, but we just happened to take this long to get our blogging lives together - it's hard with two different work schedules!
So we wanted to write a post on these very exciting rainbow sweet cupcakes for those of you who, like us, aren't tooo concerned by your calorie intake.
We love how incredible they look with their rainbow swirled buttercream and sprinkling of sweets. And they taste divine too! Previously, we had kept these simple with just plain vanilla for the cupcake and buttercream but this time we stepped it up. This buttercream is a swirled delight of lime, orange and raspberry flavours, which tastes so amazing! Yes, the lime buttercream probably should have been green but we just love this turquoise with the pink and orange so we ran with that.
The cupcake recipe is our standard, basic vanilla sponge. This is what we use as a base for most, if not all, our cupcake recipes. If you've been looking for a foolproof vanilla sponge recipe for cupcakes or cakes then this is one to bookmark!
So... Let's do this!
Ingredients:
For the Cupcakes...
6oz butter
6oz caster sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
6oz self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
For the Buttercream...
5oz butter
10oz icing sugar, sieved (plus approx 3oz extra)
zest and juice of 1/4 orange
zest and juice of 1/3 lime
1 tsp seedless raspberry jam
3 food colourings
For Decoration...
sweets of your choice - love hearts, rainbows, dolly mix
Preheat your oven to 200°C/180°C Fan/Gas mark 6 and line a cupcake tray with 12 cupcake cases.
Begin by beating together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then, beat in the eggs and vanilla. Add in the flour and baking powder and mix until combined into a smooth mixture.
Divide your mixture between the 10 cupcake cases, and pop into the oven for around 18 minutes, or until golden brown and an inserted skewer comes out clean. Transfer to a wire rack and leave to cool completely before decorating.
While they are cooling you can begin to make your buttercream. In a large bowl, beat the butter until light and creamy. Then beat in the icing sugar one spoonful at a time. This is your basic buttercream so now you want to separate this evenly into 3 bowls and start mixing in the flavours and colours.
For the lime buttercream, add in the food colouring and the zest and juice of 1/3 lime and beat well. You will also need to add in extra icing sugar to achieve the right thickness and texture, and balance out the moisture just added. This is unlikely to be the same in every case so we recommend adding one tablespoon at a time - but as a guide, we added five tablespoons.
For the orange buttercream, add in the food colouring and the zest and juice of 1/4 orange and beat well. Here we added an extra four tablespoons of icing sugar to get the right consistency.
For the raspberry buttercream, add in the food colouring and one teaspoon of seedless raspberry jam and beat until combined. Again, adding icing sugar if needed - we added 2 tablespoons extra.
Spoon the buttercream into lines onto a large piece of cling film, letting the colours overlap. Then pull over the cling film in a way to make a kind of buttercream log, twisting both ends to seal. Cut off one of the twisted ends before dropping it into a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle. Pipe this on the cupcakes swirling from the outside in, and then decorate with sweets of your choice.
I'm sure you will agree that these are super exciting looking cupcakes, and good news - they taste great too! These would be the perfect cupcakes to make for a birthday party but equally perfect just for indulging at any occasion (or non-occasion!)
It was actually so nice to have a plain vanilla sponge after all the concocting of flavours and fillings for sponges that we have been doing in our last few bakes. But don't worry, the cakes are still super tasty! The swirled buttercream is really delicious and full of flavours that complement each other perfectly.
Thank you so so much for reading this post!
Please let us know if you give these a go, by tagging us on any of our social media (all links are at the top of the page or in a box to the side!)
Seeing pictures of you baking our recipes is always so exciting!
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Lots of love,
Antonia and Imogen x
