Contents:
- Editor's welcome
- Paul Waugh: From Rochdale to Westminster
- Rachel Winnard: One in Two Million
- Rochdale Sixth Form College wins at prestigious Further Education awards
- Rev Mark Coleman
- Baillie Street Quarter
- Touchstones reopens with new exhibitions
- Greater Manchester Fire Service Museum
- Highlights of a Mayoral Year
- Fancy dress posties raise £1,700 for MIND
- John Swinden’s Captain Tom 100 challenge
- Littleborough’s Tackling Minds to become first organisation to work with NHS in prescribing angling
- Keith Hicks retires after 33 years of service at RAFC
- Bid for local digital radio signal
- Carpet Creations celebrates 25 years in business
- Help fill Springhill’s gardens with sunflowers in memory of your loved ones
- Local author reminisces about Rochdale high streets in the 80s and 90s in new book
- After the storm, the healthy hazy days of summer
- Rochdale Heartbeat honoured with Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service
- Ian Jenkins: Forty Years of Making Music
- Hairdressing Trend - Babylights
- Lasting Power of Attorney
- Cupcakes recipe »
- Brown’s Cakes celebrates 10 years
- Beauty Feature: Coming back strong after lockdown
- Take a walk at Ealees
Summer 2021Cupcakes recipe
By Natasha Brown, owner of Brown’s Cakes
At Brown’s Cakes, we make a lot of cupcakes! Nearly all our cupcakes start from our basic recipe…
Ingredients:
2 eggs
125g Stork margarine
125g self raising flour
125g caster sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract
Method:
We put all the ingredients in a mixing bowl and beat them together until smooth and well combined. The mixture is then spooned into paper cases.
This recipe makes 10 cupcakes. We always bake in tens even though we use the traditional 12 hole tins.
We bake these in a pre-heated oven (180°C) for approximately 15 minutes until they spring back when pressed and an inserted skewer comes out clean.
Once cooled, squeeze a bit of raspberry jam into the cupcake and top with delicious buttercream.
Buttercream
125g butter (at room temperature)
200g icing sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract
Method:
Beat the butter, sugar and vanilla extract together with a whisk. This can be very messy! Clouds of icing sugar can waft up and fill the room so if possible cover the bowl with a clean tea towel while you beat the buttercream.
The whipped buttercream can be spooned or piped with a piping bag and nozzle onto the cooled cupcakes and sprinkled with hundreds and thousands.
Our basic recipe can be adapted to create all sorts of interesting cupcakes.
Instead of vanilla extract, we sometimes substitute the flavourings and add extra ingredients. Changing the jam can change the overall flavour too. Here are some of the variations…
Flavouring
Blueberry - add fresh blueberries, blueberry jam
Coconut - add chopped cherries, cherry jam
Almond - add sprinkling of ground almonds, strawberry jam
Lemon - grated lemon rind, lemon curd
Salted Caramel - add caramel
I find vanilla buttercream works well with most combinations but you can play around with the flavouring in the buttercream too or add a dab of food colouring paste or gel to give a bit of colour. Choosing different sprinkles also adds variety to the cupcakes.
The possibilities for creating new flavours are endless and we love to experiment with new ideas. We also create grown-up cupcakes by adding alcohol such as gin, Baileys or rum, but these are then only suitable for customers who like a tipple.
The best thing about our cupcake recipe is its adaptability and the fun we have experimenting with it!