Grand Final Take 1

For grand Final Day Take 1 I made some  footy inspired cupcakes to suit this weeks Cookbook Challenge theme of Cup.  What a day, I went over to my mums with the kids as Michael is lucky enough to be an MCC member & he even got a reserved seat in the ballot, no such luck for the rest of us.  Everyone apart from my Dad was barracking for the Pies so in the spirit of things & feeling a bit sorry for the Saints as they havent won a GF in a VERY long time, I made my cupcakes in both teams colours.  The base recipe I used was Nigella's Night & Day Cupcakes, a beautiful light & fluffy chocolate cupcake with a cream cheese icing which gave me a nice white background to paint the team colours on.  I was pretty pleased with the decorating myself, I haven't dabbled much so am by no means an expert.  Everyone else loved them too.  Now to do it all again this weekend, I think the party is at my place plus I have to take Chloe to the Justine Clarke concert in the morning so will be keeping things on the simple side.  GO PIES and finally put us all out of our misery & let us get on with Spring/Summer.....

Note - I have given the base recipe here, if you want to decorate, I used the icing tubes for sale in supermarkets, much easier than the mess of mixing your own, not to mention having to pipe from a bag!

Night-And-Day Cupcakes - Nigella Lawson - How to be a domestic Goddess

Cupcakes:

2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 tablespoons boiling water
75g golden caster sugar
50g dark muscovado sugar
125g self raising flour
2 large eggs
125g very soft unsalted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon milk

Icing:

200g icing sugar, sieved
100g cream cheese
juice of 1/2 a lime or 1 tablespoon lemon juice
12 chocolate coated coffee beans or dark chocolate (if not decorating in my manner!)

Preheat oven to 200c.  Line a 12 whole muffin tin with paper cases.  Mix the cocoa to a paste with the boiling water and set aside while you make the cupcake mixture.

Put the sugars, flour, eggs, butter & vanilla in a food processor and blitz to combine smoothly. Scrape the mixture down the sides, and then pulse while you add the cocoa paste and mil down the funnel.  You should have a batter with a soft dropping consistency, if not, add a little more milk.  Dollop into the cases in the tin and bake for about 20 minutes, until an inserted cake tester comes out clean.

Leave in the tn for 5 minutes then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.  When cool, make the icing by beating together the icing sugar & cream cheese until soft.  Add lime or lemon juice to taste & spread over cupcakes.  Decorate with a coffee bean in the middle of each or shavings of chocolate as desired.