It's a girl!

Good morning everyone!

Hope that you are all having a wonderful week-end!

Before you get to excited about the heading (no, I'm not pregnant ;-) ), some friends of ours just had the cutest little baby girl! We are so happy for them and warmly welcome their little princess into our big world.

To celebrate I made some cute little butterfly cupcakes. The recipe for the cupcakes is a normal vanilla cupcake recipe like this one:

(Makes 12 cupcakes)

3 1/2 dl (1 1/2 cups) flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 pinch of salt
125 g butter (room temperature)
2 1/2 dl (1 cup) white sugar
2 tsp vanilla essence or vanilla sugar
2 eggs at room temperature
1 1/2 dl (3/4 cup) milk (room temperature)

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Line a muffin tray with paper liners.
2. Mix together the flour, salt and baking powder.
3. In a separate bowl, beat the butter, sugar and vanilla on medium speed until creamy (about 3 minutes).
4. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
5. On low speed, beat in the flour (about 3 additions) alternating with the milk. Start with the flour and end with the flour and beat until just blended. BEWARE of over-beating at this stage...you will knock the air out of your cupcakes and they won't rise properly.
6. Pour the batter into the cupcake liners, about 3/4 full. Bake until golden and until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted. About 20 minutes.
7. Remove from the muffin tray and cool completely.

(From the book: Kids Parties by Lisa Atwood)





The frosting recipe is one that I have wanted to try for a long time...

One of my favourite blogs is written by a lady called Manuela over at Passion for baking. She always has such lovely posts and ideas. One of the frostings that she uses a lot is called "Angel feather icing". It tastes exactly as it looks...delicious and fluffy and sweet. It's basically like a meringue (or like the filling in those delicious chocolate covered Sweetie-pies).

Here's the recipe (or you can click here to see it on Manuela's site in Norwegian).

2 egg whites
170 g sugar
1 dl white corn syrup
2 tbsp water
1/4 tsp cream of tartar (I have a hard time getting a hold of this in Sweden, so I used the same amount of distilled vinegar(Ättiksprit)instead)
1 tsp vanilla
(A few drops of red food colouring...you can leave this out or colour it whichever way you want to)

1. Put all the ingredients, except the vanilla and colouring, in a glass bowl. Make sure that the bowl is free from any grease as this will prevent the egg whites from beating up properly.
2. Put the bowl over a pot with boiling water. While the water is boiling, beat with an electric mixer until the mixture becomes white and fluffy.
3. Take the bowl off the pot and continue mixing. The more you mix the stiffer the icing will get and the better it will hold it's shape.
4. When you reach your desired consistency, add the vanilla and colouring and you're ready to go!



I decorated these cupcakes with pastry bags and tips that I bought at Cervera. Then I sprinkled on some pink crystals with pink and purple hearts. Finally I made small little butterflies with fondant that I painted with pearl dust to give them a glimmer I bought the little butterfly cookie cutters at Åhléns.

Happy baking!

Love,
Heidi