Skip to main content

Vanilla cupcakes with Italian butter icing from the book 'Party Food for Girls'





Here is a recipe from my book Party Food for Girls, I haven't made it in a while, but I needed a sugar hit, and I just felt like baking... it happens!


Vanilla Cupcakes

Ingredients
120 g butter
3 eggs
130 g sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla paste
200 g self-rising flour
60 ml milk
Italian butter icing for the topping (recipe on page…)
Fresh or sugar flowers to decorate (optional)

Makes 12 cupcakes

Preheat the oven to 175°C. Line a 12-muffin tray with cupcakes paper cups.
Melt the butter in a jug, either in the microwave or in the oven (while the oven is warming up for the cupcakes). Place the eggs and sugar in a mixing bowl and whisk, using an electric beater, until the mixture looks light and pale yellow in colour. Slowly add the melted butter and the vanilla essence or paste. Keep beating at a low speed now; add half of the flour followed by half of the milk. Add the rest of the flour and milk and keep beating making sure that there are no lumps. Divide the mixture between the 12-cupcake cases
Bake for about 18-20 minutes, until golden brown at the top. You can also check by inserting a toothpick into the cupcakes: if it comes out clean the cupcakes are ready. Remove the cupcakes from the tin and let them cool down.
Prepare the Italian Butter Icing (recipe below) and decorate your cupcakes.




Italian Butter Icing


Ingredients 
160 g unsalted butter
2 egg whites
160 g sugar
10 ml water
A few drops of pure vanilla essence


Cut the butter into small cubes and set aside at room temperature.
Beat the egg whites until they form a white peak, and then add 100 g of sugar and beat for 10 more minutes.
Put the remaining 60 g of sugar in a small saucepan (possibly use a single-handle saucepan or a milk pot, which are easy-to pour). Add 10 ml of water to the sugar. Place the saucepan over the stove at a very low heat and bring it to boil. Simmer for 2 minutes, stirring gently with a metal spoon, and making sure that the sugar doesn’t stick to the edges of the pot. The sugar should melt but still look white. Don’t boil it for too long or it will turn into brown caramel; if this should happen wash the pot with warm water and start again.
Resume beating the egg whites and very carefully (don’t burn yourself) pour in the sugar syrup. Beat until the meringue is cold and then turn the speed of the beater to the lowest setting. Add the butter, little by little and beat it in until well mixed. Add the vanilla essence and beat for one more minute.
Scoop the icing into a decorating pastry bag and decorate the cupcakes as shown in the pictures.

And this is the cover of the book, the very same recipe, with the difference that at present I don't have many edible flowers in the garden a part from a few violets. Next time I'll wait to have lots of flowers, as they are the prettiest decoration ever!

Get it on Amazon!





Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to make Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum), and Sweet New Zealand

Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum) Before I start I would like to say that I don't have a sugar thermometer, essential if you are really into confectionery, and that I didn't use much sugar for these Turkish delights. Many recipes use much more sugar, and it is not that I wanted to make a low sugar treat here (it is still pretty sweet), it is just that making it at home really makes me realize how much sugar there is already in my diet, and if I can have something with a little less... well, why not! This method is 'home friendly' i.e. these can be made at home with very little effort and equipment, and the recipe comes from my book  Sweet As...  where I also have the recipe for lavender and orange blossom Turkish Delights. Ingredients 1 l water 300 g sugar 2 tbsp lemon juice 100 g cornflour 1 tbsp frozen raspberries 1 tbsp rose water icing sugar (very little) and cornflour (lots) to dust. In a pot put hal

Home Made Marzipan Sweets

This is another recipe from my book Sweet As , and something that I love to make for Xmas. I would like to say that for marzipan you should get the best almonds around, natural, but here in New Zealand the almonds taste different from the ones in Italy. They are imported, not sure where from most of the time, but they are not top grade almonds. Still, with a few tips, you can make your marzipan taste great even with 'regular' almonds! Buy them natural, not blanched, you need to blanche then yourself or the result will be too dry. To blanch them you need to put them in boiling water for a couple of minutes, and then add cold water and take the skin off, one by one. For this recipe you will need: 200 g almonds 100 g icing sugar 5 apricot kernels. As I was saying before, the almond here have little taste, so I like to collect the stones from apricot and get the almonds out. They are a real pain to crack! In the photo above you can see apricot stones and kernels. The apricot kernel

Kamo Kamo Maori Squash and Italian Borlotti Beans

A crop which gives me great pleasure is borlotti beans, not only for their flavour but also because I love the idea of growing protein food! I eat fresh borlotti, or I dry them and then use them to make nice soups and stews; in particular I like soups with pumpkins, but since this year I am traveling on, I will not enjoy the pumpkins that are growing in my garden. So I tried a different 'pairing'. A friend gave me some kamo kamo, the traditional Maori squash, and told me that the way to eat it is to boil it (skin on) and then cut it and spread it with butter (or olive oil...) salt and pepper, and scoop the flesh out with a fork. I had two kamo kamo so I boiled one (as a was told) and cut the other and sauted with a drop of olive oil and other vegetables from my garden: red onion, and celery. Then I added the beans and some water, salt and pepper, and cooked everything until the beans were soft. I added water little by little, when necessary, and I thought that this would be goo