Pina Colada Cupcakes!

 

We had a rare weekend off, and as well as our adventures at Malvern Flea (which you can read about here)  we also went to a 'hag party' barbecue. For those who don't know, a 'hag party' is a kind of combined stag and hen party - a great idea I think! So for the occasion I took along some of these pina colada cupcakes. I've made them a few times before and they always go down a treat, so I thought I'd share the recipe with you all! I realise it isn't really relevant in any way to this blog and Minimum Mouse, but everyone loves cake, don't they?! So here goes...

This recipe makes 12 cupcakes.

Ingredients

• 110g butter or margarine
• 110g dark sugar
• 2 medium eggs
• 110g self raising flour
• 1 tsp coconut flavouring
• 1 tsp rum flavouring

For the icing

• 140g butter or margarine
• 280g icing sugar
• 1 tsp pineapple flavouring

 Method

1. Preheat oven to 180c and line a muffin tray with 12 paper cases.
2. Cream together the butter and sugar, then slowly add the eggs and rum and coconut flavouring.
3. Gradually fold in the flour and then, once the mixture is smooth, spoon it into the paper cases.
4. Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until golden on top, you can check that they are ready by inserting a metal skewer into one of the cakes and see if it comes out clean.
5. Leave the cakes to cool while preparing the icing.
6. For the icing, beat the butter/margarine in a bowl until it is soft, then gradually add the icing sugar and mix it in (it's a good idea to sieve it), once all the sugar is mixed in, add your pineapple flavouring. If you want, you can add some food colouring to the icing, but I think the creamy off white shade of the icing is quite appropriate for the pina colada theme.
7. The fun bit! Swirl your icing on to your cupcakes using a piping bag. You can get really creative here!
8. Decorate - I like to sprinkle a little edible glitter and add a cocktail umbrella to create that tropical vibe, but you can do whatever you like here!

So there you are, enjoy!

All the fun of the flea!

If you're a vintage lover (and if you're reading this blog, I'm guessing you just might be!) and you live not a million miles away from the midlands, you simply must check out Malvern Flea! It's basically vintage heaven. It's a huge market that happens once a month and is a fantastic blend of vintage, antiques and oddities.

What's great about it is the fact that it isn't a full on antiques fair, so the variety of stalls means that you might find pretty much anything, and that's the fun of it. And for the odd stall that is selling nothing better than old tat, there are about twenty more selling amazing treasures. Also, Great Malvern is such a pretty little town, so you can pop in there afterwards for spot of afternoon tea, and you have the perfect day out! You can find out more here.

The Haul

We didn't actually buy all that much, we tend to buy a mix of stuff for ourselves and for Minimum Mouse, today we picked up some beautiful leather bags, a cool 1970's flight bag, a gorgeous Welsh tapestry purse and some pretty hand mirrors. I also picked up a 1930's guidebook to Glasgow and the west of Scotland, which I'm planning to give to my dad as it covers his hometown, and then, perhaps inspired by this, we spent quite a while at an amazing stall jam packed with old postcards and found a few hometown treats for ourselves - two old postcards of Aberystwyth for me (one is from 1904!) and a couple of retro 60's Birmingham postcards for James. We're going to frame them and add them to our growing collection of kitsch pictures at home.