Cupcakes, champagne and red roses – throw in 4 divas and it’s a hell of an afternoon’s baking

Last Friday, our challenge, which we had chosen to accept, was 400 cocktail-sized cupcakes, 150 american-style cookies, dips for 120 and 20 floral table arrangements. Rolling up our sleeves by 10am, the intrepid Jellie and I examined the main ingredients. Oh dear, I had been well and truly Costco-ed.

 “To be costco-ed” verb: To visit a discount warehouse and lose all sense of size and number of purchases and to  truly believe that buying a catering pack of jalapeno peppers that would keep Mexico in fajitas for a year is not only appropriate, but necessary and reasonable

Having surveyed the ingredients I had bought, who knew the butter mountaing was in Maidenhead? At least, I would never have to purchase basic baking ingredients for the next ten years. We decided on lemon cakes, chocolate chip, maple and pecan and strawberry. Sherri was to come alter for the cookies and  Joyce was head of floral arrangements. You already have the lemon drizzle recipe from a previous blog, so for today, we’ll go with the chocolate chip cupcake. To make either 12 large, 24 medium or 40 cocktail sized, you will need:

•  4ozs/115g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 4ozs/115g caster sugar
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 4ozs/115g self raising flour
• 1ozs/25g cocoa powder
• ¼  oz/5g baking powder – just to make them nice and light
• Handful of good quality chocolate chips
• 40 x Sweet sized cake cases/mini muffin cases
• For the icing: 175g/6 ozs unsalted butter
• 350g/12 ozs icing sugar
• 4 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1 tablespoon milk
• To decorate: chocloate chips, white and dark and edible glitter (optional)

Method

• Pre-heat oven to gas Mark 5, 190oC or 170oC for a fan oven
• Beat the butter and sugar until it is white and fluffy – if you’re doing this without the aid of a mixer – who needs a gym?
• Add the eggs one by one
• Sift in the flour, cocoa and baking powder
• Put 1 teaspoon of mixture in to each individual cake case for cocktail size
• Bake for 8-12 minutes until each cake is well risen and springy to touch – don’t overcook or they will not be as moist. Allow to cool, in the meantime make the icing.
•  In a  food processor or with a hand beater, combine the butter, cocoa and icing sugar until it is light and fluffy
• Either using an icing bag or just with a teaspoon, pile the mixture on top of the cooled cakes and decorate.

These are really lovely little cakes and were very popular on Saturday night. Watch out this week for  recipes for strawberry and maple and pecan, cookies and flower antics. One of the best things about cake making is scraping the bowl afterwards. Jellie certainly seemed to enjoy…