Gorgeous Vanilla cup cakes-Jungle theme

If you are in and around New York, one would not have missed the 'Magnolia' cup cakes. They are too soft and the taste is beyond description. Being an ardent fan of cup cakes, tried for their recipe online and to my surprise found it here. My four year old daughter has been requesting me to make cup cakes with jungle theme for her birthday. With the excitement of the recipe in hand, thought would create this for her birthday and no doubt, it was a grand success. The above click was taken after arranging them to take to her school.

You might be wondering why I call them 'gorgeous'. Here is the proof and this is an awesome recipe which cannot go wrong at any count. Here, goes the recipe as followed from the original. The recipe calls for eggs and butter at room temperature to acquire the perfect sponginess and taste of 'Magnolia'.

Ingredients:
All purpose flour -1 1/4 cups
Self-raising flour - 1 1/2 cups
Eggs - 4 (at room temperature)
Unsalted butter - 2 sticks (at room temperature)
Sugar - 2 cups
Vanilla extract- 1 tsp
Milk - 1 cup

For the icing:

Unsalted butter - 1 stick
Confectioners Sugar - 2 cups
Milk - 1/4 cup
Vanilla extract - 1/2 tsp
Assorted food colors -I used Mc Cormick brand

Pre-heat oven to 350 deg.

Line muffin pan with cup cake liners.

In a bowl, combine the flours and set aside.

In another bowl, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar gradually and beat until soft and fluffy. Now, keep adding eggs one by one, beating well after each addition. Now, add the flour mixture in three parts alternating with milk. Do not overbeat. Add the vanilla extract and mix well. Once the ingredients are blended, carefully spoon about 3/4th of the cup cake liners. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes.

Cool the cup cakes well before starting the icing process. Even if a little heat is there, the icing would not set and will begin to melt. Hence, complete cooling of the cake is necessary.

For the icing:
Mix the butter, sugar,milk and the vanilla and beat until smooth and creamy. Now, depending on the character on ur cake, one needs to decide upon the mix of colors. I used an array of colours like dark orange (mixture of red and yellow), light orange, black, brown (acquired by adding an equal amount of red,blue and yellow).

I successfully recreated the tiger and monkey. For the tiger effect, with the help of spatula, spread the deep orange icing evenly and a shade of light at the centre and M & M's were used for the ears and eyes. For the monkey, with dark and light brown icing again M & M's were used for the ears and eyes. Not a very difficult task for a novice.

This is my first attempt at creating jungle animals and the verdict from my 4 year old and her friends were ' awesome'. Phew, I passed the test :):)

Enjoy!!!!!!!!

'Cup cakes are dangerous, you cannot just stop with one !!!!!!! '- Unknown