Whatto, it must be Pimm’s o’clock! For me, summer is officially marked by the first Pimm’s of the season, usually shared with friends at the Royal Norfolk Show or previously on Southsea Common. I love the refreshing blend of fruits that you put in it: strawberry, cucumber, orange and mint. I’ve been thinking about how best to combine all the flavours into a cupcake and this is the result. The buttercreams all work really well, none of them overpowered each other including the cucumber which I thought would be awful because it’s quite watery. Make it into a “virgin cupcake” (no alcohol) by warming the Pimm’s in a saucepan on the hob for a minute or so. If you wanted to strengthen the flavour of the Pimm’s, then I would suggest using more than specified and reducing it in a saucepan on the hob.

Ingredients

For the cupcake

• My basic cupcake recipe
• 60ml Pimm’s

For all buttercream

• 400g icing sugar
• 250g butter

For the strawberry buttercream

• 8 strawberries
• 1tbsp sugar

For the cucumber buttercream

• 30g cucumber (use skin, but not seeds in centre)
• Small amount of green food colouring

For the orange buttercream

• Juice ½ an orange
• Rind ¼ an orange
• Small amount of orange food colouring

For the mint buttercream

• 8 fresh mint leaves
• Small amount of green food colouring

Instructions

1. Make the cupcakes as per the instructions on the basic cupcake recipe, adding in the Pimm’s at the end of stage 3.
2. Divide up the butter and icing sugar into 4 (100g icing sugar, 62g butter) and put in 4 separate bowls. Mix each until light in colour and fluffy. I recommend using a hand mixer (it saves on arm ache!)
3. Strawberry buttercream: Make the strawberry flavouring by roughly chopping the strawberries and putting in a pan with the sugar over a medium heat stirring often. Once softened, mash gently with the back of a spoon and leave to soften a little more (about 2 minutes). Pass the mixture through a sieve to remove seeds. Leave the mixture to cool, then mix into one portion of the buttercream.
4. Cucumber buttercream: Very finely chop cucumber and mix into one portion of the buttercream. Add a small amount of green food colouring, but keep it quite pale (the mint buttercream should be a stronger green).
5. Orange buttercream: Blend in juice and rind into one portion of the buttercream, then add a small amount of orange food colouring to give a gentle hint of orange to it.
6. Mint buttercream: Very finely chop mint and add to buttercream, then add a small amount of green food colouring, making sure the green is slightly stronger than that of the cucumber version.
7. Piping: I used a piping bag and a large open star piping nozzle to pipe. I put the nozzle in the bag, then placed it in a tall glass, spreading the top of the bag over the top of the glass. You’ll need to put all the buttercream in at once, otherwise all the colours will get mixed up.
8. Using a tablespoon, take a scoop of a one of the buttercream and gently push it to one side of the piping bag. Take another tablespoon and repeat with the next buttercream and so on and so forth. Once you’ve done one “layer” you can repeat again with the four colours – you don’t need to make sure each buttercream goes on the same side as the one before.
9. Pull the bag upright and knock out any air in the bag then twist it at the top to close it. Make your swirls, they’ll come out all tie dye! If you need help with swirls try this basic cupcake swirl tutorial.
10. If you want to add “lemonade” to your Pimm’s cupcakes, garnish with a ¼ slice of lemon.

Summer strawberries, mmm delicious! The strawberry flavouring you can buy in bottles has a very artificial taste, but making your own sauce is so incredibly easy, there’s no reason not make it. Plus any leftovers could easily be drizzled over some icecream. I loved opening up the cake box and letting the smell of fresh strawberry hit me.

Instructions

Strawberry sauce

• 15 strawberries
• 2 tbsp soft brown sugar

Cupcakes

Strawberry buttercream

• 300g icing sugar, sifted
• 80g butter
• 1/2 tbsp milk

Decorations

• Hot pink sanding sugar

Instructions

1. Remove stalks and slice strawberries into about 6 pieces each. Place them in a saucepan with the sugar and simmer over a gentle heat for about 10 minutes with the lid on, stirring occasionally. The strawberries will go very slushy.
2. Use a masher to gently squash all the strawberries and simmer with the lid off for another 2 minutes.
3. Run the sauce through a sieve to remove all the pips and pulp and leave to cool.
4. Follow the instructions from the basic cupcake recipe to make the cupcakes, spooning 2tbsp of strawberry sauce into the batter with step 3.
5. To make the buttercream: Using an electric mixer, mix the icing sugar and butter together until fluffy and creamy. Add 4 tbsp of strawberry sauce and the milk and whisk again until smooth. If you wish to make the cupcake swirl illustrated in the picture, you’ll need to make sure the mixture is stiff enough to hold until set, so add a little more icing sugar if needs be.
6. Frost cupcakes and sprinkle a little pink sanding sugar around the outside rim of the cupcake.

Need help learning the swirl? Watch this fab video from youtube – I just don’t reverse the palette knife back the other way.

I love bananas, but sometimes I buy too many and they all go off. Never mind, you can put them to good use with these delicious cupcakes.

{Makes 14}

Ingredients

Banana cupcakes

• 6oz self-raising flour
• 4oz caster sugar
• 4oz margarine
• 2 eggs
• 3 over-ripe bananas
• 1tsp baking powder

Toffee buttercream

• 250g toffee
• 400g icing sugar
• 300g butter
• 4tbsp milk

Instructions

Oven temp: 180°C/320°F

1. Lay out cupcake cases. If you use silicon you can lay them on a flat baking tray, if you use paper ones, I advise using a bun tin to make the cakes hold their shape
2. Peel bananas and mash well.
3. Whisk the eggs and sugar for at least 4 minutes with an electric hand whisk and beat air into the mix so it fluffs up.
4. Bit by bit, sieve in the flour and baking powder and add bits of butter, whisking the mixture each time to ensure a smooth texture, until fully mixed, then mix in the banana.
5. Spoon the mixture evenly into the cupcake cases, ensuring you smooth the tops down (it doesn’t have to be perfect!)
6. Put the cupcakes into the oven for 15-20 minutes until they feel spongey and the tops have got some colour.
7. Once out of the oven, place on a wire cooling rack to cool down.
8. In a bowl over a saucepan of boiling water, melt the fudge, milk, plus three tablespoons of the butter, whisking until smooth. Take off the heat to cool a little.
9. In a separate mixing bowl, whisk the icing sugar and remaining butter, then slowly mix in the fudge. If it’s too runny, place in the fridge for 5 minutes, then whisk it once when you get it out again.
10. Pipe the buttercream onto the cupcakes. I sprinkled mine with yellow sanding sugar, and Dr. Oetker’s Chocolate Stars.

Instead of doing something with Guiness as is traditional on St. Patrick’s Day, I decided to use another Irish drink to whip up some Bailey’s Cupcakes!

The cupcakes are just my usual basic cupcake recipe, the Bailey’s is all in the buttercream.

{Makes enough to frost 12 large cupcakes}

Ingredients

• 150g butter
• 50ml Bailey’s irish cream
• 400g icing sugar
• Flowerpaste
• Green sanding sugar
• Green food colouring

Instructions

1. I burned off the alcohol so these are family friendly by warming the Bailey’s in a pan on a low heat for a couple of minutes, stirring well to prevent it caramelising. Leave to cool for a couple of minutes.
2. In a large bowl, mix the butter and icing sugar for a minute and slowly add in the Bailey’s in, then mix until smooth.
3. Frost your cupcakes, sprinkle with a little green sanding sugar (mine’s very pale green so didn’t show up on the photo).
4. Colour your flowerpaste with the green food colouring, roll out and using a shamrock cutter, cut out shapes and place them on top of your frosted cupcakes.
5. Enjoy! Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

40mins – Prep time: 20 mins – Cooking time: 20mins

Ingredients

• 4oz golden caster sugar
• 4oz margarine (I use Stork)
• 4oz self raising flour
• 2 medium/large eggs (get them out of the fridge beforehand to warm up to room temp)
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste/3 drops vanilla essence

Instructions

Oven temp: 160°C/320°F

1. Lay out cupcake cases. If you use silicon you can lay them on a flat baking tray, if you use paper ones, I advise using a bun tin to make the cakes hold their shape
2. Whisk the eggs and sugar for at least 4 minutes with an electric hand whisk and beat air into the mix so it fluffs up.
3. Bit by bit, sieve in the flour and baking powder and add bits of butter, whisking the mixture each time to ensure a smooth texture, until fully mixed, then mix in the vanilla paste or essence.
4. Spoon the mixture evenly into the cupcake cases, ensuring you smooth the tops down (it doesn’t have to be perfect!)
5. Put the cupcakes into the oven for 15-20 minutes until they feel spongey and the tops have got some colour.
6. Once out of the oven, place on a wire cooling rack to cool down

I entered a cupcake competition at the weekend and the theme was music. I didn’t have any ideas in mind so I asked my twitter friends for ideas and one of them came up with the idea!

The cupcakes themselves use the red velvet recipe I tried before.

For the tongues and lips I used flowerpaste and made the items a couple of nights before so they would harden up a bit. I used gel food colouring to colour them – unfortunately I couldn’t get it to turn bright red! To make the templates, print out the image below twice, cutting out the tongue on one. On the other, draw in the rest of the lips and cut them out.

I then cut around the lip templates using the pink/red flowerpaste then I gently brushed them with strawberry jam and sprinkled them with red sanding sugar. Then I cut out the tongues using the pink flowerpaste, and left them to dry with the lips. When they had hardened and dried, I used white writing icing to accent the lips and tongue.

I made some cream cheese buttercream and piped it on using a piping bag, then sprinkled a few edible gold stars on. Then I added the lips and put the tongue on so it poked out.

Nom and roll!

These red velvet cupcakes have been causing me trauma today! I’ve been trying to learn how to make a swirly frosting like in this video:

Unfortunately the recipe I used was for a large red velvet cake, not cupcakes and the frosting wasn’t strong enough to hold the shape when trying to create swirls on top. Instead I found a batch of pre-made vanilla buttercream in the cupboard and used that to practice. I also made my own sugar sand really easily.

These cupcakes make perfect Valentines cupcakes – you can sprinkle these edible heart sprinkles on top too for that loving feeling. Despite being a really thick batter, they are incredibly light.

The recipes I used for the cupcakes is from Red Velvet Cake recipe from Joy Of Baking.com.

Red velvet cupcakes are tradionally frosted with cream cheese but you will need a stiffer mix like this recipe for cream cheese frosting All Recipes.com. Or you could just use a vanilla buttercream recipe – just make sure to put it in the fridge so it stiffens up if you make it yourself. Make swirly frosting on the top of the cupcakes as in the video.

I pre-prepared the sugar by mixing 6tbsp of granulated sugar with 1tsp red liquid food colouring. I stirred it well to ensure all the sugar was red then turned it onto a plate with a piece of kitchen roll to dry it out. Once dried, split up any big pieces with the back of a spoon.

Gently sprinkle the sugar on top of the cupcakes.

Add some zing to your chocolate cupcakes with a hint of orange!

50mins – Prep time: 35mins – Cooking time: 15mins

Ingredients

Cake mixture

• 200g self raising flour
• 170g caster sugar
• 170g margarine
• 80g dark chocolate
• 3 eggs
• 6 drops orange essence
• 4 tbsp juice from orange
• 1 tsp baking powder.
• Rind 1/2 an orange

Topping

• 120g butter
• 250g icing sugar
• 3tbsp juice from orange
• 3 drops orange essence
• 80g plain chocolate
• Ringe 1/2 an orange to decorate

Instructions

1. Lay out cupcake cases (about 18). If you use silicon you can lay them on a flat baking tray, if you use paper ones, I advise using a bun tin to make the cakes hold their shape.
2. Whisk the eggs and sugar for at least 4 minutes with an electric hand whisk and beat air into the mix so it fluffs up.
3. Bit by bit, sieve in the flour and baking powder and add bits of butter, whisking the mixture each time to ensure a smooth texture, until fully mixed, then mix in the orange essence and rind.
4. Melt the chocolate and spoon into the chocolate and mix in too.
5. Spoon the mixture evenly into the cupcake cases, ensuring you smooth the tops down (it doesn’t have to be perfect!)
6. Put the cupcakes into the oven for 10-15 minutes until they feel spongey on top.
7. Remove from the oven and allow to cool thoroughly. Meanwhile begin make the frosting by melting the chocolate.
8. Mix the butter, icing sugar and orange juice and essence until the mixture goes pale and fluffy, then add the chocolate.
9. Pipe chocolate buttercream onto the cupcakes and finish with a few strangs of orange rind

Make the best of summer fruits and enjoy a British tradition, stawberries and cream, with a twist! The best thing is these aren’t too sweet, with the lemon just curbing the sweetness of the strawberries.

20mins – Cooking time: 1hr – 1 1/2hrs

{Serves: 3-4}

Ingredients

16 basic cupcakes {see here for the basic cupcake recipe}

Lemon cream

• 3 tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 400ml fresh double cream
• 4tbsp icing sugar

Icing

• 200g icing sugar
• blue food paste
• water

Decoration

• 1 punnet organic strawberries (they’re nice and small and fit on the cupcakes)
• 50g pomegranate

Instructions

1. Make the icing by adding a few drops off water to the icing sugar until it’s a thick but spreadable consistency, then add colouring as desired. Ice the cupcakes by picking up a teaspoonful and gently smoothing into a circle on the top of the cupcake.
2. Make the lemon cream by combining all the ingredients and gently whisking with an electric hand mixer until it forms stiff peaks. Don’t overdo it though!
3. Using a star tip, pipe the lemon cream into a swirl on the top of the cupcakes, leaving some of the blue icing visible.
4. Decorate by gently placing a strawberry onto the top of the cupcake and placing 4 pieces of pomegranate around the lemon cream swirl.