Mini rainbow cupcakes!(:

These are by far the most awesome things I've made. It's like happiness in a bite sized cupcake. The only thing missing was frosting, but I chose to leave that out this time round because I had to transport these around.

I found a recipe with great reviews from the Australia/NZ version of allrecipes.com. Well, given that I had just gotten back from NZ, that made me just want to use this recipe. I really do miss Welly and all the amazing friends I've made there very much.

The only thing that bothered me was the difference in altitude. I've noticed that recipes don't quite turn out the same in New Zealand and back here in Singapore. Could be the climate, could be the ingredients. Idk. But I didn't want to risk a disastrously flat cupcake, so I modified it a little. Also, the original recipe calls for 4 bottles of food coloring, but yellow and blue makes green. So 3 will suffice.

Here's what you'll need:

• 1/2 cup (125g) caster sugar
• 125g unsalted butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup (125g) self-raising flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 3 tablespoons milk
• 3 bottles food coloring: red, blue, yellow

1.

Preheat oven to 175 degrees C. Line a 12 hole mini cupcake tray* (if you can procure mini cupcake liners, which are ridiculously hard to find).

2.

Cream the sugar and butter until pale and fluffy.

3.

Beat the eggs in one at a time, then sift in dry ingredients (flour, baking soda and powder, salt)

4.

Add the milk 1 tablespoon at a time mixing after each addition.

5.

Divide the mixture into 6 bowls:
In Bowl 1 - Add 1/2 a cap of red colouring
In Bowl 2 - Add 1/4 a cap of red and 1/4 a cap of yellow
In Bowl 3 - Add 1/2 a cap of yellow 
In Bowl 4 - Add 1/4 a cap of yellow and 1/4 cap of blue
In Bowl 5 - Add 1/2 a cap of blue
In Bowl 6 - Add 1/2 a cap of blue and 1/2 a cap of red
Mix colouring into each mixture after adding. Adjust color according to your preference of hue. Note that colors will become darker after baking.

6.

Divide the purple mixture between the 12 cases. Repeat with the other mixtures in this order: Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red.

7.

Bake in the preheated oven for 10 minutes.

* do note that if you do go the tiny bite sized cupcake route like I did, you will have to do this three times, which can be quite a hassle. Alternatively, this will make 12 normal sized cupcakes. The reason why I was reluctant to do this recipe is because of how much hassle it is! Most cupcake recipes have you mixing it all up in one big bowl. From there it is into the cupcake tray and then into the oven and you're done. But this recipe requires lots of bowls and lots more patience to slowly spoon the batter color by color so you'll get a nice rainbow. Look at how many bowls I used!

I think it was quite worth it though(: When they came out of the oven and tasted like little bits of bite sized happiness.

Aren't these tiny things just absolutely adorable?(:

Milo Cupcakes with Condensed Milk Frosting

This blog post is super duper delayed, for no reason other than that I like to procrastinate. So here it finally is: how to make yummy milo cupcakes with condensed milk cream cheese frosting.

I scoured the net, but couldn't find a recipe to my satisfaction. Thus I decided to create my own and my improvisation turned out pretty well. 

I particularly like this picture because you can see my dad in the background doing work relatedy thingys. So serious, as opposed to the fluffy happiness of the cupcakes.

Here is what you need for the cupcakes (yields 10-12):

Cupcakes

200g plain flour

50g caster sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

200g Milo

1 tsp vanilla extract

180g sour cream

200g unsalted butter, softened

2 large eggs

Frosting
100g butter
~200g icing sugar, sifted 
100g cream cheese5 tbsp sweetened condensed milk 

Just a note, the addition of sour cream made the cupcakes much more dense than expected. So be prepared for the batter not to rise! It came as a surprise to me. I think the next time I do milo cupcakes, I'll use my usual butter batter (say that five times fast) and experiment with that to get fluffier cupcakes.

Sift dry ingredients together, mix wet ingredients together and then marry them! After which, spoon batter into prepared muffin tray - by prepared I mean lined with muffin cups, but only if you want to of course - and then pop that into a preheated 175°C oven for approximately 10 to 15 minutes, or a toothpick comes out clean.

To make the frosting, beat the room temperature butter and cream cheese together until smooth. Slowly sift in icing sugar until desired consistency is reached. I usually go by trial and error. Adding more icing sugar/condensed milk according to whether I want it thicker or thinner in consistency. A neat tip to firm up the icing before piping it onto the cupcakes is to pop it in the fridge for a bit.

Lastly, I sifted some Milo powder on top of the icing, just because it looks pretty.

Credit for the cupcake recipe goes to Jaxe. Though unfortunately I don't think I'll ever make these again. Some of my friends loved it, but I found the cupcakes too dense for my liking.