Winter Wonderland cupcakes
Having a Christmas party and looking for something different to bake your guests? Great British Bake Off 2013 Winner Frances Quinn is our festive chef today and will be inspiring us with her recipes for Christmas cupcakes.
Makes: 12
For the cakes
100g butter100g dark muscovado sugar100g golden syrup100g black treacle100ml whole milk2 eggs2 tsp ground ginger2 tsp ground mixed spice100g self-raising flour
For the topping
500g mascarpone100g icing sugarfew drops of peppermint extract
For the decoration
100g white fondant100g desciccated coconuthandful of mint imperials, cadburys snow bites, glacier mintssilver ballsedible silver glittermini indoor sparklers-optional
Method
Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4
Put the butter, sugar, golden syrup and treacle together in a saucepan. Set over a medium heat and heat gently, stirring occasionally, until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved.
Remove the pan from the heat. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl and leave for 5-10 minutes to cool slightly.
Meanwhile, line the muffin tin with the muffin cases
Measure the milk into a jug, add the eggs and beat in
Pour the milk and egg mixture into the warm syrup mixture and beat to combine. Sift the spices and flour into the mixture, beating until thoroughly combined
Carefully divide and pour the mixture into the cases
Bake for approx 15-20 minutes, until the cakes have risen and a skewer pushed into the centres comes out fairly clean. Leave the cakes for about 5 minutes to cool slightly in the tin before transferring to a cooling rack to cool completely.
To create the decorations, begin by kneading the fondant icing until smooth, then roll out to approx 2.5mm thickness on a surface dusted with icing sugar or non-stick silicone paper. Using snowflake cutters of various sizes, stamp out different snowflake shapes.
Lay on baking parchment on a flat surface and carefully press in the silver balls. With the trimmings roll out small snowball shapes, smaller than the mint imperial sweets. Ideally leave both the snowflakes, and snowballs to harden overnight.
To create the glacier mint shards place the sweets still in their wrappers in a plastic bag, lay on a tea towel and hit the bag with a rolling pin to break into pieces. Remove the sweets from their wrappers to decorate the cake
To make the topping put the mascarpone and peppermint extract in a bowl and sift over the icing sugar. Beat together to combine till smooth and creamy.
Spoon a generous amount of the topping on to each cupcake and, using a knife or palette knife, spread over evenly. Scatter over the desiccated coconut and decorate with a gingerbread snowflake biscuit, fondant snowflakes, snowballs, mint imperial snowball and broken up glacier mint sweets. Finally lightly dust with silver edible glitter. To make the cake even more magical, stick a mini indoor sparkler into each one and set alight when you take them to the table.