Wee cakes for wee girls

Having a new gluten free cookbook and a visit to my gluten free sister, Susie, and niece, Grace, provided the perfect opportunity to try out a new gluten free recipe.

I decided to make some cupcakes. My sister Francesca wants mum and me to make cupcakes for her wedding and so we will want to make some gluten free cupcakes. Plus I know kids love cupcakes. My interest in cupcakes lately has been piqued by a number of new colourful cupcake cookbooks. One comment I read recently was that cupcakes are just any cake recipe baked as small individual cakes. What a liberating thought. So I took the Victoria Sponge Recipe and used it to make plain vanilla cupcakes.

I made them Friday night while I made the Guinness Chocolate Cake. I also had some new silicon mini muffin pans and wanted to try these out. I made one batch in cupcake papers, one in mini muffin papers and one in the silicon pans without papers. So I have estimated the baking time, because I was a wee bit distracted to take proper notice and it varied from batch to batch.

What I liked about the recipe is that it just is like an ordinary cake recipe with brown rice flour instead of wheat flour. Given my bad experiences with commercially prepared gluten free flour, I thought this an easy option. Although my mum says she has just used a gluten free flour for cupcakes and it has worked fine. Maybe this is due to us using different brands! Anyway, the cupcakes were excellent – E was most impressed by their lightness and asking me to bring him some home.

The real fun with cupcakes is icing them. My four young nieces were the icing team and I just was the coordinator, and take full responsibility for the brightness of the colours – I didn’t take as much care with adding colouring as I usually would. Quin and Maddy spread on the icing and Grace and Ella sprinkled the coloured chocolate bits on. We ended up with as many chocolate bits on the bench and the floor as on the cupcakes but it was lots of fun and they seemed to enjoy eating them almost as much (except Grace who doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth).

Gluten Free Cupcakes
(adapted from Louise Blair)

175g margarine or butter, softened
175g castor sugar
175g brown rice flour
3 eggs
1tbsp gluten free baking powder
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tbsp milk

Preheat oven to 180ºC. Put all ingredients in a bowl and beat til combined and smooth (or blend in a food processor). Spoon into min-muffin pans or cupcake pan. Made 18 mini muffins and 8 cupcakes. Bake 10-15 minutes til just golden brown and a skewer comes out cleanly. Cool on a rack and ice and decorate when cool.

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