Cooking time: 20 minutes + 20 minutes baking time | Difficulty level: Medium | Makes: About 2 dozen
Love cakes but worried about the calories? These mini cupcakes are the perfect guilt-free snack to satisfy the sweet tooth, and the frosting uses natural flavoring!
 |
| Clockwise: Strawberry, blueberry, orange and lemon |
Ingredients
Cupcakes:
2/3 cup sugar
2 large eggs at room temperature
1 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup butter
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
Frosting:
1/2 cup cream cheese
3 tbsp butter
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
2½ cups confectioners sugar
1 tbsp milk
Gel food colors (I bought mine at Target)
Flavoring: zest of one lemon and half an orange, strawberry and blueberry syrups
Method
- Preheat the oven to 350°F / 180°C
- In a mixing bowl, mix the butter, vanilla extract and sugar using a hand mixer. Add eggs one-by-one, mixing everything up until smooth.
- In a separate pan, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Sift this mixture through a sieve a couple times to mix it up well and break our any lumps.
- Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture from Step 1 in batches, making sure to run the mixer and smooth it out before adding the next batch.
- Add milk by the tablespoon, mixing it well to achieve consistency of pancake mix.
- Pour the batter in cupcake cups or a cupcake pan. Note: If you are using the paper cups without a pan, it might be a good idea to double them up so they don't unfold under the weight of the batter.
- Put the cupcakes in the oven for about 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, perform the toothpick test and decide if they need to be baked some more and add time accordingly. Note that regular cupcakes will take slightly longer to cook than mini cupcakes so make sure to check often.
- While the cupcakes are baking, mix the cream cheese, butter and vanilla extract in a mixing bowl for frosting.
- Add sugar, mixing constantly to make sure the frosting is smooth and lump-free.
- If frosting is too thick, add milk and mix well
- Divide the frosting evenly in four bowls (or how many ever flavors you wish to make).
- Add food colors and flavoring to each bowl and mix well with a spoon or fork or a mini whisk. You do not need to use a mixer for this. Please see the "helpful tips" section below for instructions on achieving these flavors and colors.
- Once your cupcakes have cooled down completely, you can frost them with this frosting. Garnish with some fresh zest or pieces of fruit or berries.
Helpful tips:
- You can use the same recipe to make a regular cake. For an 8" pan, change the baking time to 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
- For lemon frosting, add a couple drops of yellow food color, mix in some lemon zest and garnish with fresh zest. For orange frosting, mix red and yellow food colors, mix in orange zest and garnish with orange zest. For strawberry, use a couple drops of red food color, some strawberry syrup, and garnish with a piece of fresh strawberry. For blueberry syrup, mix blue and red food colors, blueberry syrup and garnish with pieces of blueberries. Note: My syrup had whole blueberries so I just used those, which then drained out some blueberry syrup on top of the frosting.
- Do not use fresh strawberry and blueberry pieces for flavoring as these bring some raw and sour taste to your frosting. It is better to just use them for garnishing and use syrups for flavoring.
- Other variations: For lime frosting, use lime zest and mix yellow and green food colors for lime frosting, for chocolate cupcakes, mix a teaspoon of unsweetened cocoa powder (you don't need food color as the cocoa powder will bring color to the cupcake) and garnishing with chocolate shavings or mini chocolate chips, and for mint frosting, add a drop of mint extract (careful! This is pretty strong), two drops of green food coloring and a sprig of fresh mint for garnishing.
- To get more creative and have swirls, don't mix the food color and flavors too well.
No comments:
Post a Comment