These super-duper cupcake cuties can be whipped up at a drop of a hat, by using the simple all in one gluten free sponge cake recipe. Once baked, cool and top with a delicious swirl of buttercream and whatever gf sprinkles that take your fancy!!
Ingredients (makes 12 large cupcakes)
For the cupcakes
175g (6oz) Lurpak spreadable butter (not low fat) block butter at room temp is great too
175g (6oz) caster sugar
175g (6oz) gluten free self raising flour or mix (add a teaspoon of gf baking powder if using mix)
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon *vanilla extract
To decorate
2 tubs of *Betty Crocker butter cream style icing. I’ve generally made my own buttercream but have recently started using ‘Betty Crocker’. It’s the perfect texture for piping and is very nice! Once opened it will keep OK in the fridge for up to 30 days.
Gluten free *sprinkles. These pretty ones just captured me. I picked them up from Windsor cakes in Warrington, along with the cupcake cases. But they are also have similar ones on Amazon.
You do have to be really ‘on it’ for sprinkles as lots of them DO contain gluten. So as always, check ingredients and then double check to make sure that there are no ‘may contain’ warnings on the pack either.
Method
Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5/170C Fan.
Prepare your muffin tin and cases.
Pop all the ingredients in a large bowl and whisk everything together (an electric hand whisk is perfect for this) until the mixture becomes pale and creamy.
Divide the mixture equally between the cases.
Transfer the tray into the oven and bake for about 18 minutes. The cake tops will be nice and springy when they are fully baked.
Remove from the oven and allow the cakes to cool. Decorate with a generous swirl of buttercream and a scattering of sprinkles. Not to worry if you don’t have a piping bag, instead, spread the buttercream over the top of the cakes with a smooth bladed knife. You won’t need as much buttercream if you do it this way. And if you like, you can then do as I do and pop a few sprinkles in a bowl and gently press the bun, buttercream first, into the sprinkles. It results in a nice neat finish.
For convenience (and very neat swirls of buttercream), I like to use the disposable piping bags from Amazon and then team them up with a metal star piping nozzle.
There we go, a super quick and yummy treat to cheer your day. Pleasing to the eye and perfect with a cuppa!
P.S. Forgot to mention to you, that these little buns will freeze really well (prior to adding buttercream). So, don’t feel you have to eat them in one go.😉 Just pop the undecorated buns into a freezer bag (or airtight container) and into the freezer. The buns will be fine frozen for up 2 months. Allow about 2hrs to defrost.
And as I’ve mentioned before, these buns when left plain, will make a delicious quick hot pudding. Just remove them from their paper case, pop them into an heatproof/ovenproof dish, add a generous spoonful of jam, syrup, lemon curd, *chocolate or *toffee sauce or anything else you fancy and pop into a hot oven for about 10 minutes or a microwave for approx 30 seconds. Make sure they’re nice and hot, but watch your tongue with the hot jam etc. Serve up with some nice thick *custard.
Liz x
*Check this product out to ensure no gluten containing ingredients or ‘may contain’ or ‘not suitable’ warnings on the pack. If in doubt leave it out.
