Earl Grey cupcakes!

Right. First post’s the hardest I guess, and the last one hardly counted.

So, to get me over this mental, not to mention linguistic, hurdle, what could be better than one of my favourite cupcake recipes.

I’ll admit that part of the cupcake’s charm is in their laughable ease; barely 10 minutes of grabbing, mixing and preheating and you can have them away in the oven. This takes a little longer and so a few people, quite understandably, won’t be interested at all. But bear with me, they’re blooming lovely.

I owe this particular treat to my talented little sis (the mini zenzeroni). Her versions no doubt cooked more evenly, rose more uniformly and were capped with a billow of bright pink icing made with fresh raspberries. Yum. But my paler versions went down perfectly well, and here they are:

Earl Grey Cupcakes

You will need:

125ml semi-skimmed milk
4 earl grey teabags
110g unsalted butter
225g granualted sugar
2 large eggs
125g self raising flour, sifted
120g plain flour, sifted

plus a muffin tin, some cases, an oven, etc…

I actually ended up using 3 teabags, because partly because I’m a cheapskate and partly because I got four out, then decided I fancied a cuppa too, 3 medium eggs (not 2 large) and I didn’t bother sifting the flour or really measuring things too closely at all, and still everything turned out alright. Plus, it gives me a great excuse for when my cupcakes don’t look quite as good.

1. Preheat the oven to 180 and heat milk on the hob until its just off boiling, then add the teabags, cover and leave for up to 30 mins (or leave for 5 but bash the teabags around a bit to colour the milk up nicely)

2. Cream butter and sugar together. Preferably with an electric whisk if, like me, you lack in the ‘upper arm strength’ department’. Add eggs one at a time, whisking a bit after each one.

3. Mix the flours in a separate bowl then add some to the buttery-sugary bowl. Whisk some more.

4. Add some teamilk. Whisk again.

5. Keep going until you’ve run out of flour and teamilk. Then grin because you took my advice and saved yourself a lot of arm-ache.

6. Fill cases about 2/3 full, and pop in the oven for about 25mins, when they should look golden and feel bouncy on top.

I covered my cupcakes in the poor man’s version of this delicious icing, leaving out the fresh raspberries and substituting vanilla extract. You just beat all the ingredients apart from the raspberries until it is very smooth and creamy, you will need either a whisk or a bloke with bulging biceps for this part. Luckily, my whisk was close to hand.

When its smooth and grain-free, or you’re bored, crush the raspberries and fold in. The quantity for the berries is a total guess, just keep going until the icing is tasty and pink. Then smother all over your cooled cakes.

Raspberry icing

110g unsalted butter

60ml semi skimmed milk

500g icing sugar

10 raspberries