Vanilla Cupcakes with Royal Icing

I recently met up with a group of friends to celebrate one of their birthdays.  It was a belated birthday celebration, and we had dinner in a simple zi char restaurant which served a great fish steamboat.

As I'm not too confident with my baking skills yet (yes, for a newbie, I have had a string of baking disasters), instead of making a whole cakes, I was really keen to try out Nigella's Vanilla Cupcakes with Royal Icing.  It was suprisingly easy to make, and the cupcakes turned out rather well!  A big relief for me given that I baked them on the day itself.

The whole joy of making cupcakes lie in the decorating!  And how easy it is to decorate them using bright cheery M&Ms!  I would really love to make these again to brighten someone's day up.

 

Vanilla Cupcake with Royal Icing Recipe (adapted from Nigella)
makes 9-12 cupcakes depending on size of paper cases


Cupcake
125g of butter (softened)
1/2 cup & 1 tablespoon of caster sugar
3/4 cup of flour
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons of vanilla essence
2 tablespoons of milk


Frosting
350g of sifted icing sugar
2 egg whites
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
A tube of mini M&Ms


Directions
Cupcakes :
- Preheat oven to 200*C. Line 12-hole muffin pan with paper cases.
- Place the butter, sugar, flour, eggs, baking soda, bicarbonate of soda into a food processor and mix till well combined, smooth and paler in colour.
- Add vanilla essence and milk with the processor on till well blended.
- Drop rounded tablespoons of mixture into each paper cake; bake about 15 minutes
- Place cakes on wire racks to cool


Frosting :
- Beat icing sugar and egg whites with an electric mixer on high speed till thick and creamy.  This may take 5-10 minutes.
- Add the lemon juice while the mixer is still on.
- Beat the mixture till firm peaks are formed.
- Spread the frosting on the cooled cupcakes and decorate with mini M&Ms.  Allow icing to set before serving.