Skip to main content

Who loves gin and tonic? I know I do!

Gin and Tonic Cupcakes!


I love gin and tonic. It is my default drink of choice when alcohol is required, and also a bit of a family tradition. When on holiday a couple of years ago with my grandparents, my grandfather frequently asked of an evening, if I wanted to join in with the gin merriments. So it is an inherited love and I have been wanting to put gin into cupcakes for a while now so here we go. My favourite gin is Tanqueray, so that is what I am going to use, but I assume any gin will create an equally yummy result.




Ingredients - this makes 12 regular sized cupcakes.

For the cakes:

175g self raising flour
25g plain flour
1 tsp of baking powder
175g caster sugar
175g butter (softened)
2 large eggs
2 tbsp tonic water
1 tbsp your favourite gin
Zest of 1 lime

For the icing:


75g soft butter
175g icing sugar
A good glug of gin, depending on how alcoholic you want the icing to taste.
Zest of a lime


Method:

Preheat you over to 180 degrees or 160 for a fan over. Prepare your cupcake tin ready for the mixture.

Place the flours and baking powder in a bowl and combine, then set aside.


In a bowl mix together the caster sugar and butter - I love my Kitchenaid so I mix in this. Once light and fluffy, add the eggs one at a time and make sure they are well combined. Add the dry mixture and continue to mix. Add in the tonic, gin and lime and keep mixing until all the batter looks even.


Divide the batter between the cupcake cups, and bake for around 25 minutes - test the cakes with a skewer to check they are done before removing from the oven.

Place to cool on a wire rack, and pierce the cakes several times. Brush over the cakes with some extra gin, to give it an extra kick.


When completely cool mix together the icing ingredients until fluffy - I like to pipe onto the cakes for a nice finish. Sprinkle with the zest of lime, then sit back and enjoy your hard work! 









Comments

Popular posts from this blog

BBC Good Food Caramel Brownies

Another get together with friends has prompted some more baking (whilst the baby is sleeping) and the salted caramel cover recipe from a BBC Good Food issue from a while back caught my eye. I have been storing this recipe waiting for a good excuse to bake it, and I can say (after scoffing a few), these brownies do not disappoint and will be made again. Brownies are very easy to make, the one stumbling point I often find is the temperature of the oven and the time they are baked for - as ovens vary vastly this is quite hard to write into a recipe, but I have a fan assisted fairly new over which bakes quite hot. They key for baking the brownies is checking after the stated time, and they should still be a little liquid in the middle if you want moist squishy squares. Leaving them to cool completely in the tin is also an essential, as if they are cut too early they may still be too liquid. Time to make batter - around 15 minutes Baking time - 35 minutes depending on your oven I

Breastfeeding my baby, six months on.

Breastfeeding is a topic which many people feel very passionately about, and when you are a new mother countless people offer advice, opinions and their own stories. This isn't always helpful though, and as a first time mum it can be slightly overwhelming, especially when advice is quite frequently contradictory or just doesn't fit your own situation. When you look at the statistics for breastfeeding in the UK you can see we as a country fall far behind the rest of the world (stats taken from Unicef 2010 survey): E xclusive breastfeeding at six weeks was 24% in England, a cross the UK, at three months, the number of mothers breastfeeding exclusively was 17% and at four months, it was 12%. However, exclusive breastfeeding at six months remains at around 1%. Rates of ‘any breastfeeding’ at six weeks was 55%, while at six months they were 34%. My daughter is just about to hit the six month mark, and I fall into the 'any breastfeeding' category. Pre-baby I was conv

Bourbon Chocolate Brownies

There seems to be a bit of a trend at the moment for brownies with all kinds of sweets and biscuits added to the top to give an extra dimension to these absolute classic bakes. Doing the rounds on Instagram which caught my eye were Bourbon brownies, in particular Frances Quinn's version (Former GBBO winner). Her food imagination and photography is always beautiful and well worth checking out. I have used my own brownie recipe which combines cocoa and melted dark chocolate topped with neat rows of Bourbons, making a brownie which perfectly compliments a good cup of tea. Time to get dunking! Ingredients: 220g butter 180g caster sugar 150g light muscovado sugar 50g cocoa powder 50g dark chocolate (70%) 1 tsp vanilla extract 2 eggs 120g plain flour 1 packet of Bourbons - I used 13 ontop of my batter, but you can add more or less depending on how you want your brownies to look. Method: Preheat your oven to 180C/ 160C fan assisted and line a brownie tin. In