First Bake in 2014 - Rainbow Cupcakes

Hello! Welcome to the brand New Year 2014!
Hope you all had a great celebration! :)

I as usual always prefer my cosy home with families. My parents were not in town so it's just me, hubby and the kids. Even the kids were asleep when the clock ticked to midnight :)

Just a normal, usual and simple dinner I cooked, I didn't even take any pic of the food. Nothing fancy, really. A dish of meat and a dish of veggie, eaten with rice
As dessert, I made two kinds of bread pudding. One with chocolate chips, golden raisins and marmalade. The other one was with chocolate chips and grated cheddar cheese
I used recipe from HERE
We were pretty stuffed! :)

The next day, on New Year day, we were invited to my sis' boyfriend's place, spent the day there. The kids were swimming and we had lunch together.
Just ordered pizza and had some beer and chips. Oh and dessert was the bread pudding I made the day before as dessert :)

So, that's it. Simple way of celebrating but we did treasure every minute of togetherness :)


Okay, now back to baking
Just want to share my first bake of the year - rainbow cupcakes

It's been so popular everywhere but I was always too lazy to bake some cos it's so troublesome! And will leave me with piles of dishes to do
But Abby has been asking me to bake this one so I just did, with her help :)

 

 

I used recipe Vanilla Cupcakes from Joy Of Baking

 

What you need:

 

113g unsalted butter, room temperature

130g caster sugar (original recipe used granulated white sugar)

3 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

195g plain flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

60ml fresh milk

(original recipe used zest of 1 large lemon but I skipped this)

 

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 175 degC and line 12 muffin cups with paper liners
2. Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla extract
3. In a separate bowl whisk together the lemon zest (if used), flour, baking powder, and salt
4. With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and milk, in three additions, beginning and ending with the flour. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed
5. Divide the batter into 6 small bowls. Add in colouring accordingly, just a few drops each bowl will do. I used red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. The orange and yellow were too similar I couldn't see the difference. I should have added more of the orange colour. And there's a little accident for the purple. I mixed red and blue but somehow after adding the red, I took brown instead of blue. It's just a drop or two when I realized it, then I added the blue. Hence the brown like purple colour LOL
6. Starting from purple, drop a tablespoon to the centre of each muffin cup. Followed by blue, green, yellow, orange, and lastly red (this all done by Abby)
7. Bake for about 17 - 20 minutes or just until set and a toothpick inserted into a cupcake comes out clean (always check a few minutes before the stated baking time. Do not over bake or the cupcakes will be dry)
8. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool

 

 

 

We all loved the texture of these cupcakes. Soft, fluffy and moist

The kids were thrilled with the rainbow colour. But mummy was not so after seeing the dishes in the kitchen. Especially after hearing Abby asked me to bake more rainbow cakes in the future LOL

But I must admit, seeing the colours made me happy :))