Vanilla Cupcake Recipe

I absolutely love cupcakes, they're fun, they're sweet and they're easy to make. I often whisk up a batch when I'm feeling peckish, and they always go down a treat with my family. Here's the recipe which I use:

Ingredients for the cakes:

• 90g self raising flour
• 90g caster sugar
• 90g butter (softened)
• 2 eggs
• 1tsp vanilla extract

Ingredients for the butter icing:

• 100g unsalted butter
• 225g icing sugar
• 1 tbsp milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius, and line a muffin tray with cupcake cases.
2. Sieve the flour into a large bowl and add the butter, sugar, vanilla and eggs. Stir with a wooden spoon until creamy.
3. Spoon the mixture into the cake cases, then bake for around 15 minutes until golden.
4. Leave to cool while you make the butter icing.
5. Beat the butter until it is smooth and creamy, then add the icing sugar (around a third at a time).
6. Add the milk and vanilla and beat until it's really smooth.
7. If you want to, you can add food colouring at this point.
8. Once the cupcakes are cool, spoon or pipe the butter icing on top.
9. Add other decorations to taste.

These cakes are really simple and taste amazing! If you'd like to make chocolate ones, simply add 100g of melted chocolate to the mixture before before spooning it into the cases. You can also replace the milk in the butter cream for 1tbsp of cocoa mixed with hot water. Enjoy!