We've been making chocolate buttercream cupcakes.
We were sent a pack of Persil branded goodie bags along with a challenge to cook up a recipe with the kids.
Persil's Cook with the Kids is a campaign to get parents and children cooking up a mess in the kitchen. To help families create foodie memories together. Persil is giving away some fantastic cooking rewards, from chef hats and colourful whisks to aprons and bright silicone cake cases, all you have to do is collect the claim codes on the back of Persil washing up bottle.The kids wanted to cook chocolate cupcakes with buttercream fillings. We've never cooked cupcakes before, and I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was. The kids loved them and we will definitely be making some more. It was fun and we made a mess in the kitchen.Ingredients
Cupcakes:375g of plain flour
400g of caster sugar
30g dark cocoa powder
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon of salt
2 free range eggs
250ml of milk
250ml of water1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
Buttercream:
250ml of vegetable oil1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
50g of unsalted butter
50g of margarine
250g of icing sugar
1 pinch of salt
3 tablespoons of milkMethod
First we preheated the oven to 190c, then we realised we didn't have any cupcake over trays, oops! So a quick dart down the supermarket Hubby came home with a couple.
In a large bowl we mixed together the plain flour, caster sugar, the cocoa powder, bicarbonate of soda and the salt. Once this was mixed I made a hole in the middle of the mix and cracked and poured in the eggs, along with the oil, milk, water and vanilla extract, mixing it all together and thoroughly. Once I had a smooth consistency we poured the mix into the cupcake oven tray holes - half full, to allow for the rise.You then bake them for 20 minutes. Whilst they were baking we started on making the buttercream. You have to beat the butter and margarine until smooth and then blend in the icing sugar and salt. Slowly beat in the milk and vanilla extract until it is light and fluffy. You are then meant to pipe the buttercream through the bottom of the cupcakes, but we didn't have any piping bags so we improvised and used the Calpol syringes instead - which worked perfectly.Allow them to cool.
We were super pleased with how well they came out!
We popped them into our cupcake cases.
We syringed some of the vanilla cream into the to the middle of the cakes -syringing underneath. We don't have a piping bag, so I used the Calpol syringe instead, it worked perfectly.
Jacob wanted some sprinkles on his, so he spread some chocolate icing on the top first, and then tapped some sprinkles on top.
What better way to clean up the mess than with Persil.