Colourful Cupcakes

Christmas Designed Cupcakes

These cupcakes can be enjoyed any time of the year and are really easy to do. I used sugar dough ready made coloured icing because I was short on time, but I’m glad I did as they weren’t too sweet. Half of this particular pack made 30 cupcakes and cost me about £2.

The coloured icing I used

What you will need:

Coloured icing (This can be homemade, and I will post a good recipe at a later date for coloured icing, but I just used sugar dough which I bought in Tescos)

4oz caster sugar

4oz self raising flour

2 eggs

4oz margarine

Dash of milk

What you need to do:

1. Sieve the flour and mix together with the sugar and butter together in a mixing bowl. (I use an electric whisk, but a wooden spoon would also work)

2. Slightly whisk the eggs and add to the mixture, continuing to mix it.

3. Add a dash of milk until the mixture is of a creamy consistency

4. At this point you could add chocolate chunks, flavouring or dried fruit for an interesting twist

5. Place cake cases into a muffin tray and spoon in the mixture, filling it about 2/3 of the way full to allow for them to rise

6. Pop them in the oven for about 15-20 minutes until they are cooked throughout. You can test this by putting a knife into the biggest cupcake and making sure it comes out clean.

7. Take them out of the muffin trays and allow them to cool on a wire rack

8. Whilst they are cooling, sprinkle a little icing sugar over a clean work surface

9. Take out your first coloured icing and roll it to your desired thickness with a rolling pin (also covered in icing sugar to make sure that it doesn’t stick)

For the purpose of this recipe I am going to explain how to make star patterns, but you can experiment with any design that you like.

10. Find a round cutter that is the same size as the top of your cupcakes. If you can’t find an exact match you could use one slightly smaller, or one slightly bigger and then trim the edges off with a knife.

11. I normally have four colours and make a dozen cupcakes, so cut out three circles from each colour

12. These circles can be placed on top of the cupcakes, once the cupcakes are cool

13. If the icing doesn’t stick, you can use a pastry brush with a little water, and lightly brush onto the icing to make it stick. Alternatively, you can use a little icing glue to stick it down

14. Choose a shape cutter, that fits within the circle cutter that you used, to cut out your the rest of your coloured icing. I normally choose to do three of each colour again, just to make things a little more interesting

15.  Place the shapes on top of your icing circles and follow step 13 if needed

16. These are then ready to serve as they are. Keep them in an airtight container to prevent them going dry.

My Rudolph Experiment

If you did want to experiment with a more complicated design, the icing colours can be mixed together to make different colours. For example green and red makes brown etc. With this Rudolph cupcake, I simply just worked in layers. So started with his head, made the antlers separately , added his eyes, added his nose and then used a knife to do the detail. Not too bad for a first attempt! Soon I will be creating cakes like these…

Made by ‘Minky Kitten Cakes’ based in Bath

For my other cupcake recipes including White Chocolate and Strawberry, Orange Chocolate and Mint Chocolate please click the Cupcake link under Categories.

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