Easy peasy cupcakes!

A barbecue at home, finally! Downside was the fact that for this first barbecue of the season, I wasn't home. It was a high school class reunion that interfered. 
The class reunion was delightful, by the way. We laughed a lot at the stories we recalled and the situations we'd been into since. It's been 4 years since we graduated, and this was the first time we met up with most of our former classmates. Last reunions were always a meet-up of a few 'die-hards' :P

The barbecue was postponed earlier (see last post) and it was said to be the last day of good weather. No time to loose then!

My mum and dad were both working, my sister had her boyfriend over and I was just at home until leaving for the class reunion at 5 pm. 'Just at home' meant that I was the only one who could do the preparations for the barbecue. A barbecue I couldn't even attend, but then: who cares?

After making some salads, I decided that a dinner party without dessert couldn't be complete. And because there would be two young children of 7 and 4 years old, I thought cupcakes would do the trick. They're small enough for a children's tummy, they can be any taste you like and they're so easily decorated.

The base for my cupcakes was a recipe for Madeira cake. 

I prepared the dough and filled the tray, and then I found out that the dough wouldn't cover the usual 12 small cakes. 11 is a very odd number indeed, but look on the bright side: there is always one cupcake for you to taste without ending up with an uneven number on your table! 

Ingredients for 11 cupcakes:

- 115 grams butter

- 100 grams sugar

- 1/2 bag (7 grams) baking powder

- 75 grams flour

- 50 grams vanilla pudding powder

- 2 small eggs

- decoration like icing sugar, chocolate, sprinkles, brésilienne nuts, ...

How to:

Stir the butter and the sugar until you get a smooth mixture. It's supposed to be creamy. Then you can add the eggs, one at the time. 

Add the dry ingredients and stir until you get a thick dough.

Spoon the dough with a teaspoon (about 2-3 teaspoons for each cupcake) in the tray.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180°C for about 25 minutes.

Cool and decorate as you wish.

As you can see, I prepared different sorts of cupcakes too. I divided the dough in three portions and added a few drops of almond essence, a few drops of vanilla essence and raisins, and one teaspoon of cocoa powder and chunks of white chocolate respectively.

Were they good? Well, I can tell you that all of them were gone when I returned home from the reunion. That's proof enough when you know there were only 7 people dining here and there was loads of food ...