Birthday Cupcakes

Americans seem to love mixing sprinkles into cakes, so I thought I would give it a go. They call it funfetti but it just reminds me of birthday party food!

I love this, they look so fun and set up any table to look like a fun party. Got to love some hundreds and thousands. Note to self – buy some more sprinkles! I love the way they brighten up the simple icing, and I am going to start buying up some more variety.

I made these for my brother’s girlfriend’s birthday. She’s a big fan of Lilo and Stitch and so I made some cute cupcake toppers with Stitch stickers and toothpicks – Stich merchandise is niche so I didn’t expect to be able to find any ready made toppers. Really simple but really effective, I’ll be busting out my crafty side to do this again!

Makes 18 cupcakes

Ingredients for the Cupcakes

• 115g butter
• 200g granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 200g plain flour
• 50g cornflour
• ¼ tsp baking soda
• ¾ tsp baking powder
• Pinch salt
• 180ml buttermilk
• ½ cup of sprinkles

Ingredients for the Icing

• 100g butter
• 300g icing sugar
• 1 tsp lemon curd (optional)
• A splash of milk
• Food colouring

Method

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C.

Beat the butter and sugar together.

Add the eggs one at a time and beat between each addition.

Mix together the flour, cornflour, bicarb of soda, baking powder and salt.

Add the flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk to the egg mixture (flour, then milk, then flour, then milk, then flour). This will help it not to split.

Finally, add the sprinkles and stir through.

I added more sprinkles after this picture

Bake for 20 minutes until golden and cooked through.

Allow to cool on a wire rack.

Now, prepare the buttercream icing.

Cream the butter, and mix in half the icing sugar. Spoon in the curd and milk and mix well. Add in the rest of the icing sugar, adding more if needed to get a thick piping consistency. Mix through the food colouring (I divided mine into two to go for pink and purple) and split into piping bags.

Decorate, sprinkle over some more sprinkles and serve!