Food Network: Lilac-or Chocolate-Topped Cupcakes

	Print 4x6 Recipe Cards
	Print this recipe out and cut along the dotted lines to add this 4x6 recipe card to your personal collection.

Lilac-or Chocolate-Topped Cupcakes
Recipe courtesy Nigella Lawson, 2007

Ingredients
For the cupcakes:
3/4 cup self-rising flour
1/2 cup very soft unsalted butter
7 tablespoons sugar
2 eggs
1 to 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Few tablespoons whole milk

For the icing:
Approximately 1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted, or instant royal icing
1 to 2 tablespoons water
Food coloring paste, I'm using Grape Violet
Gold chocolate button (or any candy coated chocolate)
1 recipe Chocolate Ganache, recipe follows

Special equipment: 1 (12-cup) cupcake pan or 3 (12-cup) mini-cupcake pans with appropriately sized
paper baking cups

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

For the cupcakes:
Put all the ingredients for the cupcakes except the milk into a food processor and blitz furiously.
Then pour in the milk, and process again until you have a smooth batter. Divide the mixture between
either the big muffin pans or the 3 small pans.

Cook the big cupcakes for about 15 to 20 minutes, and the small ones for about 10 minutes, although
you might need to keep a closer eye on the little ones. Cool the cupcakes on a wire rack.

For the icing:
To ice the mini-cupcakes, mix the confectioners' sugar with a tablespoon or 2 of water from a
recently boiled kettle or cold water (according to package instructions) for instant royal icing

until you have a smooth, spreadable paste. In both cases add water slowly: you don't want this
runny, and nothing is more irritating than having to start sifting more sugar. The merest, tiniest
blob of food-coloring paste- in this case, as I said, Grape Violet - will be enough to bring a dizzy
and rich-toned intensity to the proceedings; you can always add more coloring if you want, but again
the important thing is to guard against having to do any more sifting. And if you have been too
heavy-handed and landed yourself with a batch of unusable dark icing, then just make up some more
plain white icing and add to tone down.

Slice any peaking humps off the tops of the cakes with a sharp knife and then pour, from a dunked-in
spoon, the icing over each cake until the tops are thickly and smoothly covered. Let stand for a
couple of minutes until the icing has set a tiny bit and then dot a gold button or other decoration
of your choice on top.

Chocolate Ganache:
7 ounces bittersweet chocolate, with a minimum 70 percent cocoa solids, chopped, or use chocolate
buttons

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons heavy cream

Put both ingredients in a saucepan and, over low heat, cook until the chocolate's melted. Whisk
together with handheld mixer or electric whisk (for ease and preference), watching the mixture
become thick and glossy. Spoon and smooth over your waiting cupcakes. . Let stand for a couple of
minutes until the icing has set a tiny bit and then decorate in whatever way you want.

Yield: enough to ice 12 normal-sized cupcakes