If you pay any attention to food at all, you would have noticed that cupcakes are very popular at the moment. There are “cupcakeries” popping up all over the place and fancy flavours and icings are all the rage. And why wouldn’t they be? Cupcakes are cute, easy to eat, and tasty. They are also incredibly easy to make and decorate.
This is my kind of cooking. I like to make foods tastes great, looks good, and is super easy to make. Take a plate of cupcakes anywhere, and you will have people fawning all over you like you are some kind of Nigella Lawson, domestic goddess type. And lets face it, Nigella I am not!
Our church had a women’s outreach night last Saturday, and I did what I do best – I organised the food. Several women from the church made other slices and biscuits (church women are always brilliant cooks – it must be a spiritual gift), and I did good old cupcakes.
There is no trick to it. I made a nice moist vanilla cupcake recipe that I got from Taste.com.au. It make about 80 mini cupcakes.
I then iced them with a butter cream icing – my tip for icing quickly is always to use a piping bag – so much faster and more professional looking than a knife.
Finally to make them look a bit fancy I topped each one with a chocolate heart that I had piped. Again it looks fancy but is super easy.
Put some chocolate into a snap lock bag and microwave on medium in 30 second bursts until the chocolate is melted. (it is important to stop and mix it every 30 seconds so you don’t burn the chocolate). Then simply snip one of the corners off the bag and pipe little hearts onto baking paper and allow to set. You can really do any shape you like, but hearts are easy. When the chocolate is set just use a butter knife to lift the chocolate onto the icing.
It would look great with dark chocolate ganache icing and white chocolate hearts too!
Yum!
What are your favourite quick and easy, impressive foods?
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