Less is definitely more when it comes to glitter and colour

In the same batch of cupcakes as the aforementioned most beautiful cupcakes to ever come out of the oven was a house warming gift for N and D for when they moved into their Shepherds Bush flat.

Made from the same Hummingbird Bakery Vanilla and lemon zest recipes and the same batch of buttercream, these were a colourful, glittery version of the get well soon cupcakes.

I used colour paste in lilac and kelly green to colour the buttercream just slightly and topped them with a dusting of glitter which I had bought at the Cake International exhibition in Birmingham. The lemon zest cupcakes are the same recipe I adapted previously with no additional decorations.

It is important to use strong colours and glitter sparingly as I have found that nobody likes eating them and they are always the last to leave the plate. When colour, glitter or other decorations, remember, less is definitely more.

Have you ever seen something so perfect come out of the oven?

There are times when you simply cannot believe the beauty of the cupcakes which come out of the oven.

This was one such time. I was making cake for K, she'd been confined to her sofa at doctors orders after an operation. So one Saturday afternoon our friends descended on her to keep her occupied.  I couldn't make the gathering but sent cake instead.

I made daisy topped vanilla and lemon zest cupcakes made by adapting the basic Hummingbird Bakery vanilla cupcake recipe.


Ingredients:
120g plain flour
140g caster sugar
1 ½ tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
40g unsalted butter, at room temperature
120ml Milk (the original recipe says whole milk, but I only ever have skimmed, so I use that)
1 egg
¼tsp vanilla extract

You will also need a muffin baking tray and muffin cases, Tesco and Sainsbury's have the best shaped cases, I find that Waitrose cases are slightly thinner so you can see the cake through the paper once it's cooked.

I make buttercream equal parts unsalted butter to sifted icing sugar. I always add in a little more icing sugar to allow for it to escape whilst mixing it in with the butter. It doesn't matter if you include more icing sugar than butter as your buttercream will just be more fluffy, however if there is more butter then the buttercream will be too heavy.

I normally start off with 100 grams of butter and 100 grams of icing sugar if I'm just using a palate knife to top the cakes; piping a topping will use a lot more buttercream.

Here I was making lemon and vanilla flavoured buttercream, so I combined the butter and icing sugar together first, divided the mixture in half before adding a couple of drops of vanilla extract to one and some finely grated lemon zest and a couple of dashes of lemon juice to the other.