My Cupcake Adventure...

...well, more of an experiment really I suppose, but adventure sounds better!!! As it is The Queen's Diamond Jubilee coming up and then The Olympics here in London...I thought I would get a bit of patriotic practice in...(oh yes and it's my birthday this weekend, so an even better excuse to make cakes!!) 

I decided to try out a theory of mine...one that came to me at about 3am one morning...as these things have a tendency to do!! 

I had seen the two-tone swirly icing technique many times before, but wondered if the same technique could be applied to cake batter?!?

So off I went to the kitchen to try it out! First of all I started with a basic victoria sandwich recipe:

*170g butter

*170g sugar, caster

*3 eggs

*170g plain flour

*1tsp baking powder

*1tsp vanilla

I used my Kenwood Chef to make it, as I wanted a really light fluffy texture...so in went the softened butter and sugar, and it was beaten until as pale as pale can be!! Then in went the eggs...followed by the flour, baking powder and vanilla...one final mix and it was ready to experiment with!!!

I got three tallish glasses and three disposable piping bags ready...

 then, being a bit fussy, I weighed the mixture into three bowls..I wanted to make sure I had more-or-less the same amount for each piping bag...

...coloured one as red as I could using gel colour, one blue using gel colour, and left the third one white(ish)

 ...The mixtures each got spooned into one of the piping bags, which carefully had their ends snipped off and then got put into a normal plastic sandwich-type bag...a large one!!! Then off with the end of that one!! 

 ...and using this extra large three-tone piping bag (was a bit fearful it would turn out looking like toothpaste!!) I piped the cake batter into the cases...

 ...a bit of a fiddle, but they looked great...ready swirled and marbled red, white and blue for me!

 They were baked at Gas 5/180-190c for 20 mins...then left to cool...

 ...Then I used the exact same method to pipe some vanilla buttercream (nice and easy recipe...150g unsalted butter, very soft, 300g sifted icing sugar and 1tsp vanilla, all whizzed together) on top...

 Here they are...all swirled red, white and blue...

The Small Ones liked them, and want one each in their lunch boxes tomorrow!! So not sure there will be many left for my birthday...but never mind, this week's Weekly Bake-Off Challenge is Mary Berry's American Chocolate Ripple Cheesecake...that will do with some candles on the top!!