Pipers Cup Cakes

Piper loves to help out in the kitchen and Grandma's birthday recently gave her the opportunity to help make some delicious cup cakes.

Grandma has to follow a Gluten Free diet so cupcakes are made with special gluten free flour, we usually use a mixture of various flours to give a nice light consistency.

For the cupcakes

• 125g (4oz) butter, melted
• 125g (4oz) caster sugar
• 125g (4oz) Gluten free flour (we use 1/2 gluten-free self-raising flour and 1/2 rice flour)
• 2 medium eggs
• 3tbsp milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

For the icing

• 150g (5oz) caster sugar
• 100g (3½oz) butter, softened
• Few drops of vanilla essence

1. Set the oven to gas mark 5 or 190°C.
2. To make the cupcakes: Pour the melted butter into a bowl and add sugar, flour, eggs, milk and vanilla extract. Beat the mixture with an electric hand whisk, to give a smooth batter. Spoon mixture into the paper cases in the tray.
3. Bake cakes in the centre of oven for 18-20 mins, or until they rise and are light golden brown. Remove tray from the oven and leave cakes to cool for a few minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
4. To make the buttercream: Using the electric whisk, mix together the sugar, butter and vanilla essence until this forms a creamy, fluffy mixture.
5. Fill a piping tube with the buttercream and pipe a swirl on top of each cupcake. 

The lack of gluten in the cakes means they can go dry quicker than 'normal' cakes so I'd recommend eating them within 1 day of making them. This is no real hardship because they look so pretty with their swirl of icing.

The hardest part of making these cakes is convincing Piper to put the cake mix in the cases to bake it. She would happily eat the uncooked cake mix!

She also particularly likes cleaning out the icing bowl!

 Happy Birthday Grandma, if you need any help eating the cakes just let us know!