I was asked by a friend to prepare a selection of cupcakes as a birthday cake. Now as you may have gathered I am trying to make a break from cupcakes looking for 'the next big thing' in baking. However I have to confess there is much delight to be had in swirly technicolour icing and sprinkles so I set to on my task.
I stuck with a couple of old favourites - chocolate and lemon complete with swirly icing and was very pleased with the results, but as I've mentioned this is safe ground.
The third cake was my venture into the unknown - Carrot cake cupcakes. I decided to use my trusty carrot cake recipe and a lot of hoping that it would translate into mini form. I generally use this mix as a tray bake so I was concerned it would lose it's characteristic moistness through being placed in small cupcake portions. However (good old sneaky oil in cake mix...) this was not the case and they were just as moist as their tray bake brothers.
Icing these was simple - Cream cheese and the juice of an orange, as I would have done for a tray bake - but of course slightly stiffer in order to be able to pipe it.
The major downfall came with my enlightened idea of placing a wee mini royal icing carrot on the top of each...handmade of course by moi...first one - ah so cute. Second one - this is pleasant. Third one - Dear god...how many of these do I have to do...? One of those 'Seemed like a good idea before you started it' deals. Still, I was very pleased with the end results and it's definetly something I shall use again in the future!
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