Creating your own cupcake flavours

As most of you know I'm really into experimenting with new flavours and making your own flavours of cake is actually really fun and easy. The first essential step is having a really good basic cake recipe to work from.

Today I tried out a random google searched recipe for 'plain cupcakes' which I then altered to make my own Pink lemonade and Mexican hot chocolate flavoured cupcakes. The result was pretty awesome! Really light, really fluffy and really delicious cupcakes.

Ingredients:

• 125g unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 ½ cups plain flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ¾ cup (185mL) milk

Method:

Preheat oven to 180°C. Place muffin papers in one 12-hole muffin tray or cupcake papers in two 12-hole cupcake trays. In an electric mixer, beat butter for 2 minutes until pale in colour and creamy. Add sugar one third at a time, beating well between each addition. Add the eggs one at a time, beating for about a minute between each addition. Add the vanilla essence and beat until combined. Sift flour and baking powder and add half to butter mixture with half the milk, mix until well combined. Repeat with remaining flour and milk.
Fill cupcake papers ¾ full (an icecream scoop is perfect for this). Bake muffin size cupcakes for 20-25 minutes and small cupcakes for about 15 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle of a cupcake comes out clean. Transfer to wire racks and allow to cool completely.

Now for my additions....

I wanted to make pink lemonade cupcakes after I saw Tania's awesome ones (check out my previous post). So I just added a few tablespoons of lemon juice to the cake then made a butter cream icing and added lemonade concentrate and pink food colouring.

In most recipes you have some leeway in terms of how much 'extra stuff' you can add without the recipe turning into a complete fail. So don't be afraid to add a few tablespoons of this or that. If you want some nuts add some, if you want some chocolate add some etc,etc. Just make sure its not more than a few tablespoons or things will start to go amiss.

For the mexican hot chocolate ones I added two tablespoons of cocoa and a handful of dark chocolate chips to the cake batter. For the icing I halved the butter cream I made for the lemonade cupcakes but added 2 tablespoons of this bad boy...

If you've never tried it before you need to! It's my favourite drink at the moment. You just heat it up with some milk in the microwave for a delicious spicy (cinnamon and chilli) chocolatey drink. If you want to try a really authentic Mexican hot chocolate you should grab one from La Boca Loca in Miramar, you can even get one to takeaway.