My Birthday Picnic

So it's my birthday this week and I made the fatal mistake of planning a picnic in August. Anyone who lives in Johannesburg or has been here knows that August is WINDY. Never mind the wind though, we didn't even make it to the botanical gardens because of the cold and sleet. So at the last minute I had to send everyone text messages and we had the picnic indoors. Turned out to be a good thing because there was a big international Rugby match on, South Africa's Springboks versus the New Zealand All Blacks (Springboks won.... YAY!).

Given that the party was supposed to be a picnic, I created a garden of cupcakes. They turned out so beautifully that I couldn't pick just one or two photos and so I created a collage (using Picasa).

Because the decorations were fairly elaborate I stuck to plain vanilla and chocolate cupcakes. I used basix white icing and rather than chocolate icing, I used Nutella chocolate spread. For the grass I sprinkled the cupcakes with green coloured sugar with a tiny bit of food glitter mixed in, and coloured coconut flakes. In South Africa we can only get fine dessicated coconut, but I get a regular supply of the flakes from aunts in the US and Australia.

By far the biggest hit were the mini cupcakes. Again, I baked just vanilla and chocolate in mini wafer cups. I dipped the bottom half in milk chocolate and the top half in white chocolate, and added a few sprinkles. Unfortunately I overheated the chocolate a little and it went grainy, so they didn't look so pretty, but judging from how quickly they were eaten..... they tasted good.

My friend Cinthia's two year old daughter, Talia, provided a few giggles. I couldn't understand why she wasn't eating her cupcake, it was afterall a little cupcake for a little person. I realised later that she couldn't peel off the wafer cup, because she's always being reminded to pull the paper off cupcakes. That cupcake sure did disappear quickly after the wafer was gone.

Talia all dressed up for the cold weather

The chocolate cake recipe is......

200g plain flour

35g cocoa powder

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

125g unsalted butter at room temperature

200g sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

120ml milk

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees (celsius). Mix dry ingredients together and set aside. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add vanilla. Alternately add flour mixture and milk and beat until the batter is smooth.

Spoon the batter into cupcake papers, filling cups about 2/3 full (I find every recipe is different - these rise quite a bit).

Bake for 20-25 minutes (you'll know how hot your oven gets) or until a tester inserted into the centre comes out clean. Remove from the oven and cool.

Basic White Icing

3 tablespoons hot milk or cream

375g icing sugar

Put the hot milk/cream in a large bowl and beat until it is thick enough to spread. Then beat for a few minutes until it is creamy. You may need to add more liquid. I found that it took 5 tablespoons of hot milk.

I baked just over 100 cupcakes and by the end of the day there were just 4 cupcakes left. It made the perfect Sunday morning breakfast...... a cup of coffee and a cupcake......... mmmmmm YUMMY!

On Friday I have promised to bake cupcakes for tea time at the office. Anyone have any fun ideas? I'd love to hear from you!

Happy baking!