Nigella’s vanilla cupcakes

I made these cupcakes a while ago, as part of an “experiment” – I’d seen lovely cupcakes decorated with rolled fondant on the Internet and felt like making them at home.
It was my first attempt at cupcakes and I really liked the result!!

The flavor was wonderful!! The cupcakes were so delicious I had 2 right out of the oven… I’m not the one to blame – the smell was so tempting, I couldn’t resist!! :D

Recipe taken from Nigella’s website.

UPDATE: I forgot to write that I used dulce de leche to as "glue" to stick the rolled fondant to the cupcakes.

Nigella’s vanilla cupcakes

125g self-raising flour
125g caster sugar
125g soft unsalted butter
2 eggs
½ teaspoon real vanilla extract
2 tablespoons milk, approximately

Preheat the oven to 200ºC/ and line a 12-muffin pan with paper cases. In a medium bowl, cream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs one at a time with a little of the flour. Then add the vanilla extract and fold in the rest of the flour, adding the milk to get a dropping consistency. It will look as if the scant mixture is not enough to make 12 cupcakes, but it is. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the cupcakes are cooked and golden on top. As soon as bearable, take the cupcakes in their cases out of the tin and let cool, right way up, on a wire rack. Decorate the cupcakes after they’re completely cool.

Makes 12

White cake

I made this cake last year for my mother-in-law’s birthday party. Since she used to work as a seamstress, the cake was a pillow with sewing gadgets and a small rose.

I used Nic's white cake recipe, which is just fantastic. When I took the cakes out of the oven I felt like taking a big bite of them. Seriously – the smell was wonderful!

The recipe is perfect: the cake is delicious and firm enough to be covered with rolled fondant. I’ve made it several times with different fillings/icings and the results have been great.

The cake was lightly brushed with my traditional sugar syrup and filled with dulce de leche beaten with a dash of heavy cream - I do this to make it a bit less sweet and also to spread it more easily.

It was a hit at the party and the kids ate all the sugar decorations. :D

White cake

240ml (1 cup milk) room temperature
6 egg whites
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
315g (2 ¼ cups) cake flour
350g (1 ¾ cups) sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
170g (3/4 cup) butter, softened

Preheat oven to 175ºC/350ºF.
Grease two 22cm cake pans with butter, line the bottom with parchment paper, grease the parchment paper and flour the pans.
Combine milk, eggs whites and extracts in a small bowl with a fork. Set aside.
Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in an electric mixer and mix at slow speed with a paddle attachment – since I don’t have it, I used the regular beaters of my mixer.
Add butter. Continue beating at slow speed until mixture looks like wet sand (If you're doing this by hand, sift the dry ingredients together and rub in butter).
Add all but 120ml (½ cup) of milk mixture and beat at medium speed for 1 ½ minutes. Add remaining milk mixture and beat for an additional 30 seconds, scraping the sides of the bowl if necessary. Do not overmix.
Divide batter evenly between prepared pans and gently shake to smooth batter. Bake 30-35 minutes, until toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
Let cakes cool in the pans for 15 minutes then invert onto racks to cool completely before frosting.
Unfrosted cakes can be frozen for 1-2 weeks.

Serves 16-18

This recipe was posted on the Portuguese version of my blog on Sep. 27, 2006.