It is hard to add certain flavours to icing sugar, so I think these pre-flavoured packs from Sugar & Crumbs – which use all-natural ingredients – are brilliant.
I got three packs for my birthday: salted caramel, key lime and pink lemonade. Pink lemonade is one of my boyfriend’s mum’s favourite drinks, and as her 60th birthday was approaching – and her other daughter-in-law was making the birthday cake – I decided to use the flavoured icing sugar to make her some cupcakes.
I looked for some recipes online and couldn’t find anything that looked quite right; many of them used lemon flavour but nothing to get across the sparkle and fizz of actual lemonade, so I decided to create my own recipe.
These cupcakes were amazingly light and fluffy and tasted delicious (the icing was a big part of that!) – I was told that someone who doesn’t normally eat cake at all was persuaded to try one, and went back for seconds! More importantly, my boyfriend’s mum loved them.
I used some cow-print cupcake cases that I was sent by cake decorating equipment supplier Mein Cupcake, which trades in the UK as Cake Mart. They were very appropriate as my boyfriend's mum's last name is Cowe (pronounced cow) and I thought they were very good - the pattern remained bright and clear after baking, which doesn't always happen with cupcake cases.
Pink Lemonade Cupcakes – an original recipe by Caroline Makes
Makes about 18 cupcakes
¾ cup butter, softened
1 ½ cups caster sugar
2 eggs
2 ½ cups self-raising flour
75ml lemonade (or pink lemonade, if you have it)
Tiny amount of pink food colouring
For the frosting:
1 500g packet Sugar & Crumbs pink lemonade icing sugar (or, plain icing sugar mixed with the juice of 1 lemon)
250g butter, softened
Tiny bit of pink food colouring
Preheat oven to 180C. Beat the butter with the caster sugar, then beat in the eggs. Fold in the flour a little at a time, then pour in the lemonade and mix carefully. Add the food colouring and mix until the batter turns pink.
Line a muffin tin with cake cases and spoon the batter in so each one is about 2/3 full. Bake for 15-20 minutes then remove from the oven and allow to cool.
For the frosting, beat the icing sugar with the butter, and the lemon juice if you are using, and add the food colouring. Choose your favourite piping nozzle, attach to a piping bag and pipe pretty swirls.
I'm sending these to Love Cake, hosted by Ness at JibberJabber UK, as the theme is midsummer madness, and these little cakes are very summery.
