Vanilla Chai Cupcakes Recipe

While I was known for mixing up sugar and salt and forgetting crucial ingredients in cooking classes at school, one thing I will say I've begun to get better at is making cupcakes. It's been quite a while since I've put the old apron on but this week I decided to break out the oven mits and get cracking some eggs. Why not blog about the process in the meantime! Well.. 4 hours later with a whole lot of picture taking, I present my recipe for Vanilla Chai Cupcakes.. enjoy!

Ingredients (Makes 12 Cupcakes):
2 Medium Free-Range Eggs
100g Self Raising Flour
100g Butter
100g Caster Sugar
1 tsp Vanilla Essence

For the buttercream icing:
270g Icing Sugar
140g Butter
3 tbsp of Drink Me Chai Vanilla Chai Mix

Instructions:
1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4 and line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper cases.

2. Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl, once combined add the eggs and stir in the vanilla essence.

3. Once combined, gradually fold in the flour with a wooden spoon until the mixture is smooth and of dropping consistency. Spoon mixture into paper cases until half full.

4. Bake the cupcakes in the oven for around 12-15 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Set aside to cool on a wire rack for 10-20 minutes.

5. Moving onto buttercream icing, pop your butter in the bowl and half of your icing sugar. Once combined, add the rest of your icing sugar and 3 tablespoons of the Drink Me Chai Vanilla Chai Mix into your mixture. Add more or less quantities of chai mix to your liking.

6. Spoon the buttercream vanilla chai icing into a piping bag with a star nozzle, piping in a spiral motion or small little stars like I've done (much easier!).
7. Dig in!

Once I'd had a little practise with the icing on the other cupcakes, I brought out these special little silicone teacup cupcake molds for the last two cupcakes, aren't they cute! Especially fitting as we're making tea inspired cupcakes here! I hope you all enjoyed something a little different from us, it was a lot of fun being a food blogger for the day. If any of you decide to recreate this at home, I'd love to see it, feel free to tweet us a little picture @lisaandsami if you do!