Camomile Honey Cupcakes

Honey and camomile – my new bedtime beverage before I drift off to sleep on my duck down pillows, which are incidentally my favourite kind of pillow, regardless of how unhygienic and allergy causing it supposedly is.

Here’s my sketch of my vision of what I think my cupcake should look like. Apologies for my drawing skills – drawing was never my strong suit.

Also, on a side note – I would like to tell you that all was not fine and dandy in the kitchen when I attempted this recipe. I photographed my egg disaster:

Tip of the day : Make sure all utensils are absolutely spotless before attempted to beat your egg whites, otherwise…. well – let this photo be a cautionary tale.

Onto the recipe!

Ingredients (Makes 6 cupcakes)

Cupcakes
1/2 cup self raising flour
1/3 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
3 tabsp vegetable oil
1 teabag of camomile tea

Meringue
1 egg white
25g caster sugar
10g water

Decorations
Plastic ipettes (I got mine off eBay)
Honey
Fondant bumblebees (tutorial here)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160 Celcius (fan forced). Mix all the cupcake ingredients together and beat with an electric mixer for about 5 minutes or until light. Pour into a piping bag and pipe into cupcake liners for the neatest result. Bake for 20 minutes or until cake springs back when lightly pressed.

2. Whip egg white into soft peak stage in an electric mixer. Meanwhile, heat sugar and water to 121 Celcius. Pour sugar mix into egg white while mixer is running at low speed and then turn up to high speed. Continue to whip for another 5 minutes or until cool.

3. To decorate, watch the video tutorial I made here.

If you wanted to know what my photography set up was, here it is! Just the usual settings – 60mm 2.8f shot with a Canon 7D and edited with Lightroom 4.

Vanilla Cupcakes with Honey in Pipette

I spend a lot of time browsing the internet looking at the creations of everybody else out there. People are so creative! Anyway, I usually end up liking an idea and deciding to come up with my own spin on it. So, when I saw cupcakes with pipettes full of a variety of liquids I had to make my own. Who doesn’t like an interactive cupcake?

After much umm-ing and ahh-ing I decided to make a vanilla cupcake and fill my pipette with honey. I also decided to make swiss buttercream for the first time in my life and I am proud to say that I was successful!

Cupcake was decorated with a chocolate ball and some French Earl Grey tea leaves.

Recipe as follows:

Cupcake component –

Ingredients

• 1 1/3 cups self raising flour
• 1 cup sugar
• ¼ cup butter, room temperature
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup buttermilk

Heat oven to 160 Celcius (fan forced). Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla and beat until well incorporated. Add flour and buttermilk and fold until well combined. Fill into cupcake liners and bake for 18-20 minutes or until golden and springs back when pressed.

Swiss Buttercream recipe from here.

I got my pipettes from eBay, in case anyone was wondering.

To assemble, I piped the buttercream on with a star tip, popped a chocolate ball on the side and filled a pipette with honey and inserted it into the cupcake. I actually trimmed down my pipette as well because I thought I preferred it that way. Now that I’m looking at it again perhaps a longer pipette would have been more dramatic. Oh well – maybe next batch.

In case anyone was wondering, the honey did not leak into the cupcake, although honey is pretty viscous and I kept it in the fridge, which would have made it even more so. Perhaps with other liquids it may.