New Year's cupcakes recipe

Whip up a batch of these celebratory New Year’s cupcakes in just 20 minutes.

These New Year’s cupcakes not only look the part but taste delicious too with a subtle vanilla flavour. This recipe uses reduced-sugar buttercream but this can easily be swapped for classic buttercream icing (opens in new tab) instead. You will need 12 black cupcake cases to complete this cupcake recipe (opens in new tab).

Ingredients

• 150g caster sugar
• 150g unsalted butter
• 140g self-raising flour
• 10g cornflour
• 3 medium eggs
• 30ml milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• Gold chocolate curls
• Edible gold stars

For the reduced-sugar buttercream:

• 240ml milk
• 60g plain flour
• Pinch of salt
• 110g vegetable fat such as Trex
• 110g unsalted butter
• 220g caster sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

You will also need:

• 12 black cupcake cases
• Piping bag
• Wilton 1M nozzle

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 160°C/320°F/Gas Mark 3.
2. Line the baking tray with cases. Beat the sugar, butter and vanilla extract with an electric mixer until light and fluffy (about 5 minutes).
3. Add 1 egg, 1/3 of the flour and a splash of milk and beat until just combined. Repeat until all the ingredients are combined. Divide the batter between the 12 cases (use an ice cream scoop to get even amounts) and bake for 25-30 minutes depending on your oven. Remove and cool in the tins for 10 minutes before moving to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.
4. To make the reduced-sugar buttercream heat the milk in a small saucepan, over a gentle heat, Whisk the flour and salt into the milk and continue to heat gently while whisking continuously (to avoid lumps), until the mixture takes on a thick pudding-like consistency. Leave to cool for 30 minutes.
5. In a separate bowl, cream the vegetable fat, sugar, butter and vanilla until light and fluffy.
6. When the pudding has cooled add it to the creamed vegetable fat and butter mix one spoon at a time, beating with an electric whisk until all the pudding has been added. It will be very light in texture and quite white when it’s ready. Cool in the fridge for 15 minutes, this helps stiffen it slightly so it’s ready to pipe.
7. When the cakes are cool add a Wilton 1M nozzle to a large piping bag and place it in a large glass (pint glasses or picnic tall glasses are great).
8. Pull the bag down around the glass and fill the bag by pushing the buttercream down into the bag as you fill. Then lift the bag up from around the glass and, from where the buttercream stops, push all the air up out of the bag and twist the bag right at the top of the buttercream. Hold the twist between your thumb and forefinger, apply pressure and pipe using your other hand as a guide.
9. To pipe a swirl, apply pressure to the top of the bag and, starting in the middle of the cake, first pipe a star by squeezing a star shape then releasing the pressure and pulling up quickly. Then, start at the outside edge of the paper case and, using this as a guide, pipe around the star and build up into a swirl. When you reach the end of the swirl press down slightly, release the pressure and pull up quickly
10. After you have piped a cupcake, twist the bag again so the twist is always at the top of the buttercream.
11. Sprinkle the gold chocolate curls and stars over each cake.

Top tips for making New Year’s cupcakes

Replace the vanilla extract in the buttercream with Champagne or Baileys for a boozy treat.

You might also like…

Chocolate cupcake recipe (opens in new tab)

Hummingbird Bakery’s vanilla cupcakes recipe (opens in new tab)

New Year’s recipes (opens in new tab)