Super Basic Easter Cupcakes To Make While On Lockdown!

Hey beaut's!

It's been a while...about 3 weeks to be exact and that's all down to the horrendous situation we are all in! The place I work thankfully closed it's doors a week and a half ago, and although that means I'm temporary out of work until the store re-opens I'm just so glad I can stay home and keep as safe as possible! Making sure we all stay at home can be boring but it's absolutely essential right now to protect our NHS and ourselves, so something fun you could do alone or with your kiddies is bake!

The recipe I'm sharing today is pretty basic (plain sponge and chocolate buttercream) and is made up of the simplest ingredients which hopefully you'll already have in your cupboards at home, I bake a lot so I do always have a stash of ingredients in my baking cupboard and the Easter mini eggs I already had as I was planing on doing lots of Easter recipes for you guys, but that's not worked out as I'd hoped so I'm using up the bit's and pieces I'd bought already! 

What You Will Need For The Cupcakes - Makes 12
125g butter
2 free-range eggs
125g self raising flour
100g caster sugar
25g light brown sugar
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
splash of milk

What You Will Need For The Icing
150g unsalted butter
300g icing sugar
15g cocoa powder
2-3 tbsp milk
Any Easter treats you have to decorate.

How To - Cupcakes
1. Firstly pre-heat your oven to gas mark 4 /180 and line a muffin tin with your cupcake cases.
2. In a large mixing bowl, whack in your butter and both of your sugars and cream together, then pop in the rest of your cupcake ingredients and mix until smooth with a hand whizzer or standing mixer. If the mixture is a bit thick then add a splash of milk to loosen things up.
3. Pop a heaped tablespoon of the cupcake batter into each cupcake case and bake in the oven for around 16-18 minutes or until the top of the cupcakes are springy to the touch, then transfer onto a wire rack to cool.

How To - Icing
1. In a large bowl, beat the butter until it becomes smooth and silky, then start adding the icing sugar and cocoa powder slowly to avoid the dreaded icing sugar cloud and mix again until combined. If your buttercream becomes thick just add in a tablespoon of milk at a time until you get the perfect consistency.
2. Pipe or spoon the icing on top of the cupcakes and decorate how you wish, I used up some Cadbury Mini Eggs and some Smarties Orange Eggs for mine.

 And there you have it, a simple yet effective bake which can be adapted if needs be, if you don't have any light brown sugar then just add an extra 25 grams of caster sugar or vice versa, if you only have light brown just use that. If you only have plain flour that's fine too but you'll need to add some baking powder!

Do let me know if you give these a go beaut's!