Our mother’s day cupcakes have a delicious vanilla sponge, strawberry jam centre and an easy buttercream icing.
This cupcake recipe is perfect if you don’t know what to buy as a mother’s day gift. There’s nothing quite like a homemade gift and these cupcakes taste and look amazing. You can also make them at any time of year and change the flower decorations or just keep the cakes plain.
Ingredients
- 150g caster sugar
- 150g butter
- 140g self-raising flour
- 10g cornflour
- 3 medium eggs
- 30ml milk
- 1tsp vanilla extract
- 12 tsp strawberry jam
- Ready-made flower and butterfly decorations
For the buttercream:
- 110g butter, room temperature
- 500g icing sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 60ml milk
WEIGHT CONVERTER
Method
- Heat the oven to 160C (140C fan, Gas 3). Line a 12-hole muffin tray with cupcake cases.
- Put the sugar, butter, flour, cornflour, eggs, milk and vanilla extract into a large bowl and beat with an electric whisk until smooth.
- Divide the mixture evenly between the paper cases, filling each to 3/4 full. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until springy to the touch. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before leaving to cool completely on a wire rack.
- When the cakes have cooled, use an apple corer or a sharp knife to remove the middle from each cake, saving it for later. Add 1 tsp of strawberry jam to the centre of each cake and replace the piece of cake, pushing it down on top of the jam.
- To make the buttercream icing: Add butter, icing sugar and vanilla extract to a large mixing bowl, then beat for about 5 minutes with an electric whisk until smooth. Pour the milk in gradually and only if you need to loosen the mixture. You want it to be thick enough to hold its shape but also loose enough to pipe.
- Transfer the icing to a piping bag with a star nozzle attached. Pipe a swirl of icing in the centre of each cupcake, then starting at the outside edge of the paper case, using it as a guide, follow it around, piping around the swirl in the middle of your cake and build up into a taller swirl. This stops the swirl from collapsing.
- Top immediately with the sugar flowers and or butterflies.
Top tips for making Mother's Day cupcakes
The cupcakes can be made ahead and iced a couple of days ahead but will taste the best when eaten as close to when they were baked. If you don’t like vanilla you can flavour the icing with lemon zest, almond essence or even a dash of gin. For tips on how to make your own sugar flowers plus much more, continue reading below.
What is used in making sugar flowers?
To make your own flower decorations you’ll need 100g ready-to-use sugar flower paste, edible glue or a 5g piece of flower paste dissolved in 1tbsp boiling water.
You will also need food colouring and a selection of cutters to make flowers and or butterflies. We used butterfly, flower and daisy centre cutters. Many bakers like to use a sponge for their sugar creations to dry on but a plate lined with parchment paper will be fine too.
How to make sugar flowers and butterflies?
Divide the flower paste into four portions and colour three of them and leave one white for daisies, if you like. Using your flower cutters, cut 12 flowers from each colour.
Victoria says: ‘You can make primrose and hydrangea flowers look more realistic by using a petunia veiner. Simply press the flower in the centre of the veiner and press the two sides together.’
Use leftover yellow paste to make the centres for the middle of your daisy flowers. Colour any leftover white paste green and use it to cut out leaf decorations or colour it another colour and stamp out butterflies.
Glue pearl sprinkles in the centre of the flowers by using some edible glue or the homemade glue paste. Once the flowers and butterflies are cut out, assembled and dried, use them to decorate your cupcakes.
You can make the decorations ahead of time.
Easy mother’s day cupcake decorations
If you don’t want to use sugar flowers and you don’t have time to make your own, simply top the cupcakes with some sprinkles. If you have little ones who want to help, why not let them draw little pictures and stick them to cocktail sticks with tape to stick in the top of each cake.
Fresh berries like raspberries, blueberries and blackberries always look attractive and a simple grating of chocolate looks effective and is tasty too.
It’s important to thoroughly and efficiently mix the ingredients for the cake batter. The best way to do this is by using an electric hand mixer like this one from Kenwood.
