Coffee Cupcakes

Recipe: Coffee Cupcakes

Coffee cake is a favourite treat of mine, I love the flavour and smell. This recipe only uses one egg and 135g of butter (which tend to be the expensive ingredients in baking) to make 12 cupcakes, so does fairly well on the thrifty scale. It's adapted from Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery, which is one of my favourite books and is full of cupcake recipes for every occasion.

A box of these would make a lovely gift for a coffee (or cake) lover.

Ingredients
60g unsalted butter (remove from the fridge half an hour before cooking)
60g demerara sugar
60g light brown soft sugar
1 egg
60g self-raising flour, sifted
60g plain flour, sifted
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon coffee (espresso/instant whatever takes your fancy)
60ml semi-skimmed milk

For the icing:
75g unsalted butter
1 teaspoon semi-skimmed milk
1 teaspoon coffee (espresso/instant)
150g icing sugar, sifted

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180℃/160℃ fan/350℉/Gas Mark 5 and line a 12 hole tin with cases (I used standard size in this recipe, you'd need to make more mixture if you wanted to use muffin size)

2. Cream the butter and both sugars using an electric mixer, until the mixture is pale and smooth

3. Add the egg and mix again for a few minutes

4. Combine the flours in a separate bowl

5. Mix the coffee, milk and vanilla extract in a jug and stir to combine

6. Add one third of the flour mix to the creamed butter/sugars/egg mix and beat well

7. Add one third of the coffee/milk/vanilla mix and beat well

8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 until all of the milk and flour mixes have been added

9. Spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases, filling them to about two third full

10. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes until golden and slightly risen and an inserted skewer comes out clean

11. Whilst the cupcakes cool on a wire rack, prepare the icing by mixing the butter, milk, coffee and sifted icing sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer until smooth and creamy

12. Ice each cupcake and decorate with grated chocolate or a chocolate covered coffee bean if you wish

Enjoy your lovely indulgent treat!