Purple Party Cake

This week one of the lovely girls in our office turned 30 years young and the best way to celebrate such a momentous birthday... cupcakes obviously.  

I was a little bit apprehensive about making these cupcakes as last week when I made my vanilla cupcakes from a recipe which I have been making forever, I seem to be getting something clearly wrong. My cupcakes were consistently coming out of the oven all perky and high, then I would disappear upstairs for 10 minutes and I would come back to some sunken sad looking cupcakes. Once you put the icing on, you are none the wiser just by looking at them however what should be a lovely light cupcake base is a dense cake which is completely unappealing to me - in a cupcake anyway.

 

This problem was bugging and I was racking my brains to find out what I was doing wrong all of a sudden and I finally cracked it! BUTTER!! Previously I am prone to using Flora as this is better for the waistline and I always have a large tub in my cupboard. This had always worked for me in the past however after my cupcake class the other week I remember Chole saying '..I don't know who said never to over beat a cupcake mixture to get as much air in as possible...' So with this in mind I have been putting Big Red into action and getting all the air I can into my cupcakes. It finally clicked and I went with my theory that was the Flora that couldn't hold the vigorous beating and so I switched for good old unsalted butter. I don't know if it was the fact that for the first 10 minutes out of the oven I never took my eye of them so they wouldn't sneakily sink behind my back, but the butter seemed to do the trick and I had some lovely jam filled vanilla cupcakes which I topped with delicious purple butter cream icing and a bit of edible glitter.
If they sink again... I'm moving onto mini pound cakes!

Happy Baking x