Home Economics: Cupcakes

Hi there!

Today I will be writing about how I made Cupcakes in Home Economics. 

Ingredients:

125g Margarine/Butter
3/4 c   Sugar
1 t Vanilla Essence
2 Eggs (size 7/biggest size)
1 1/2 c Plain Flour
2 t Baking Powder
1/2 c Milk

Method:

1. Cream margarine in a large bowl. Use a wooden spoon.
2. Add sugar and continue creaming until light and fluffy in texture.
3. Add vanilla essence and beat briefly.
4. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after you have added each egg.
5. Sift flour and baking powder onto a large plate.
6. Using a rubber scraper, scrape all the mixture off the wooden spoon.
7. Add 1/3 sifted flour/baking powder mix and fold in half the milk using the scraper. 
8. Repeat step 7 for the next 1/3 flour mix and the rest of the milk. Do not over mix. 
9. Add the last of the flour and gently fold this into the cake batter.
10. Carefully spoon cake batter evenly into 12 paper cases.
11. Bake at 180°C for 7 minutes then turn over to Fan Bake for a further 6-8 minutes.

Icing:
50g Margarine/Butter
100g-150g Icing Sugar
Flavour (Essence)
Colour (optional)

Method:

1. Cream together margarine, icing sugar and flavouring.
2. Spread icing onto cooled cupcakes and decorate with sprinkles if available

Remember:

• Preheat your oven
• Measure all ingredients accurately
• Gently fold in flour/baking powder (dry ingredients) alternately with the milk
• Do not over mix the cake batter
• Put the paper cases into cupcake or muffin tins before spooning in the cake batter

Icing Spatula

We used basic icing and decorating techniques when it came to that stage. For icing, we used a icing spatula (also known as a palette knife). We used generous amounts of icing so that we wouldn't have any dents in our cupcake as well as wanting it to look appealing to the eye. We also used the spatula to smooth out the icing so that there was an even layer all around the cupcake.  
For decorating, we used M&M's and licorice candy (I decided not to use licorice) 

The cupcake itself tasted like vanilla. They were fluffy and airy when you bit into them, this means that the ingredients were mixed well together otherwise they would be dense. They looked soft and spongy inside and bounced back when you touched them.  
The icing was eye-catching as it was blue. We added orange flavoured essence to our icing which tasted really good. We decided to choose blue as our colour and orange as our flavouring as it was an interesting pair, you would guess that the icing was blueberry or something to do with the sea. 

Here are some photos of my end out come:

Thanks for reading!