Happy Baking- Malteser Cupcakes

It's been a little while since I've baked any cupcakes and my stomach was telling me it was time to change that! I wasn't completely sure what I wanted to bake so I had a look on the internet for some inspiration and found a lovely little recipe for malteser cupcakes on the bbcgoodfood website. I've changed it around a bit because I thought it needed a few changes and I'm really happy with the result- As was my boyfriend!...These little fellas didn't stay around for long!

**Sorry for the quality and lack of photos!- I took some really nice ones, but the colour on my camera was playing up so they came out really strange :( **

Makes 12-16 Cupcakes, depending on the size of your case.


Ingredients-

For the Cupcakes-
200g Unsalted Butter- Softened
100g Caster Sugar
10g Soft Brown Sugar
2 Eggs
1/4 Teaspoon of Vanilla Extract
200g Plain Flour
3 Teaspoons of Baking Powder
Generous Pinch of Salt
100ml Milk (I use Skimmed but any should be fine :) )
120g Maltesers

For the Icing-
I used my favourite butter icing recipe, which is from the Hummingbird Bakery recipe book!
500g Icing Sugar
160g Unsalted Butter- Softened
3 Tablespoons Milk
1/4 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Maltesers for decoration

Method-

For the Cupcakes-
1) Preheat your oven to 180C and line a cupcake or muffin tin with cases, then put to one side.
2) Add the softened butter and both sugars to a bowl and cream together until they are lighter in colour, and look a little fluffy.
3) Add both eggs and the vanilla extract to the creamed mixture and carefully mix together.
4) Add all of the dry ingredients to the bowl and carefully stir together- Be careful not to over mix at this stage.
5) Add the milk to the mixture and mix it through the mixture to loosen, before adding the maltesers and giving one last stir.
6) Spoon the mixture into the paper cases until roughly 3/4 full- Trying to make sure an even number of maltesers goes in each one if you can.
7) Put them in the oven and bake for 18-22 minutes, or until the top is a light golden brown and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
8) Once baked, remove the cases from the tins and let the cupcakes cool completely on a wire rack while you make the icing!

Butter Icing-
1) Sieve the icing sugar into a bowl and add to it the butter, milk and vanilla extract- Start mixing the mixture using a folk.
2) When the mixture has come together with an electric whisk (Or a lot of arm power) for 3-5 minutes- Or until the icing is a really pale colour and nice and fluffy.

Decorating-
The butter icing can either be piped onto your cooled cupcakes or spooned on and smoothed down- Let your imagination run wild! I think it looks lovely to finish the cupcakes off with either a couple of whole maltesers or some chopped maltesers :)...Yum!