My First Attempt at becoming a Domestic Goddess..

One of our amazing wedding presents was a KitchenAid mixer. That's right, KitchenAid. I've been desperate for one of these for years, my mum and sisters remembered that and very generously bought one for us in (squeee!!) baby pink. I LOVE it so.

Hubster and I had one of our dearest friend's baby's Christening party coming up so we thought it'd be nice to make our own cupcakes to bring instead of buying them in M & S, as is our usual MO (we've been watching a lot of Criminal Minds). Also, I bought "Saved by Cake" by Marian Keyes at the weekend and it gave me a serious urge to bake.

If you haven't checked out this book yet, I can seriously recommend it. The recipes are mouth watering but simple to make and the book is peppered throughout with Marian's trademark wit. Love it.
Anyways, we decided upon Raspberry and White Chocolate Cupcakes, which we made twice about a year ago and even though they were a huge success, we didn't make them again for some reason.
I don't recall where I got this recipe from but I know I googled it at the time and I think it could have come from the BBC Food site. Sorry if that's not hugely helpful but such is life!

Raspberry and White Chocolate Cupcakes

• 200g Self Raising Flour, sieved.
• 200g Caster Sugar
• 200g Butter, at room temperature
• 4 Eggs, at room temperature
• Half a teaspoon Baking Powder
• Pinch of Salt
• Half a teaspoon Vanilla Essence
• 150g Raspberries
• 100g White Chocolate

For the Butter Icing, you'll need:

• 150g Icing Sugar
• 75g Soft Butter, soft at room temperature
• 50g Raspberries
• Chocolate shaving/Raspberries to decorate

.
1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees celsius and line bun tin with cupcake cases.
2. Chop the chocolate into very small cubes and coat in a little flour (they hold onto their shape a little better this way when in the mixture and baked). 
3. Put all the cupcake ingredients except the chocolate and the raspberries into a bowl and beat with an electric whisk (Woop, Woop!! KitchenAid! Woop!) until you reach a thick, creamy consistency.
4. Now, with a spoon, gently mix in chocolate and raspberries- try not to break up the raspberries too much. 
5. Using two spoons or a spoon and a knife, spoon mixture into cases, put into the middle of the oven and bake for 20 mins. Lick the spoon and/or bowl in the manner of a small child. Then, conveniently find something really important to do while your other half starts the clean up.
6. When cooked, remove from the tin and allow to cool (they should be golden brown, but if you're unsure if they're done or not, you can test them with a skewer or a knife- it should come out clean. If the skewer is wet it means they're not fully done yet..that rhymes, huzzah!)
7. To make the icing for these, you mix the soft butter and icing sugar until blended together, add the raspberries and stir gently until the icing turns pink (we used the KitchenAid for this part too, so basically not gently at all but it got the job done super fast!).
8. Spoon onto the cupcakes with the back of a dessert spoon (if, like us, you have failed to invest in an icing piper). You can add chocolate shavings, raspberries, sprinkles or any other decoration you'd like.
9. Store in an airtight container or cover with cling film to keep fresh for longer.
10. Sit back smugly and enjoy as the compliments flood in.

Mmm. Cakey goodness. For some reason I completely neglected to take a photo of these post decoration, so you'll just have to trust me that they looked great but more importantly, were completely delish. I realised today when I was writing this that we had a couple left over that didn't make it to the Christening, (as we ran out of raspberries for the tops of them) so here they are, with the addition of some percy pigs on top:

                                                                       Nom nom nom.