Brown Sugar Cupcakes and A Promised Icing

My littlest brother is going to be taking his scholarship exams to his senior school next week and he has to stay overnight for three nights so I decided to give him a  little home comfort to take with him; rolo cupcakes. These are brown sugar cakes, each filled with a rolo, then topped with chocolate buttercream. I piped some of them with icing roses and some of them are done with a traditional icing swirl and finished with another rolo. Pure decadence…and simply delicious.

I started off by mixing together the flour, two sugars and the butter

I then added the egg and vanilla

I beat this just a few times to incorporate the egg. I then added the milk and golden syrup

I beat this in until fully incorporated then filled the cupcake liners two-thirds full and baked for 20 minutes

[how cute are these pastel cupcake cases?]

I then placed a rolo in the centre of each cupcake

Next came the chocolate buttercream icing. Now, I’m going to be honest with you, this is not my best chocolate buttercream icing, Don’t get me wrong, this stuff is still addictively and I will be sneaking spoons of the leftover when no one’s watching but I made this one with milk chocolate and my all-time favourite is made with dark chocolate

I creamed together the butter and icing sugar until it was almost fully blended. I then added the melted chocolate and a little bit of milk before taking the electric whisk to it to make it super whipped and fluffy (trust me, being super whipped and fluffy makes the piping process A LOT easier)

I used my most prized kitchen possession; my Masterclass icing gun

Cake Ingredients:

115g self-raising flour

75g soft light brown sugar

75g caster sugar

1 large egg

1tsp vanilla extract

50g butter

100ml milk

2tbsp golden syrup

Method:

Preheat the oven to fan 160 (or 180 in a normal oven)

Line a 12-hole cupcake tin with cupcake liners

Mix together the flour, sugars and butters until it has a sandy texture (this step may take a little longer than expected; just when I thought I was done I found an unmixed patch of flour and a big ol’ lump of butter sitting pretty on the other side of the bowl)

Add the egg and vanilla and beat slight to semi-incorporate the egg

Add the milk and golden syrup (without making an unholy sticky mess all over the kitchen like I did whilst attempting to take photos with my useless right hand)

When everything is fully mixed together, fill each cupcake liner two-thirds full and bake for 20 minutes

Leave them to cool for a few minutes in the tray then move them to a wire rack to cool completely

Meanwhile, prep for the icing…

Icing Ingredients:

225g icing sugar

100g butter

1-2tbsp milk

50g chocolate (milk or dark), melted

2tsp cocoa powder

Method:

As soon as you’ve taken the cupcakes out of the oven, take the butter out of the fridge to soften a little

Break up the chocolate and melt either in the microwave or in a bain-marie and set aside to cool

Once the butter is sufficiently soft, beat it together with the icing sugar. Fold in the melted chocolate and 1-2tbsp milk, depending on how you like the texture of your buttercream

At this point, I whisked my icing for a few minutes with an electric whisk to make it light and fluffy which makes icing a lot easier but this step is not strictly necessary

Top the cupcakes with the icing and scoff to your heart’s content