Deepwire's Blog

As I know my time in limbo will be ending soon (see ‘The end of life as we know it‘) I have been trying to make the most of it before I start work.  This means of course, more baking!  This week, after hearing that one of my friends had been making Cupcakes, I decided I too.  I had been given a set of Silicone rubber Cupcake Moulds for Christmas, and never used them.  I was certainly dubious at putting rubber into the oven, but I knew I had to give them a chance.

The recipe I began with was nothing special, in fact, it was called ‘Simple Cupcake Recipe‘.  Of course, I did change it a little, using light brown soft sugar and caster sugar together, to get a better flavour.  After making this, I then split it in half, to make 2 different types of Cupcake.  The first, a simple vanilla mix, adding a spoon of Vanilla essence to the cake mix, before baking.  For the second, I chose Cinnamon, due to my love of it’s flavour, adding in 4 teaspoons of ground cinnamon to the mix.

Then it came time to bake them.  I filled each of the Silicone moulds evenly, put them on a baking tray, and into the oven at 160°C.  20 minutes later, when they had risen and were golden brown, I got them out.  I was surprised! They were perfectly cooked, not burnt or even crispy.  Getting them out of the moulds was a cinch – the moulds just pealed away.  I certainly have a respect for Silicone cookware now, and plan to invest in more to avoid the difficulty of removing cakes from metal tins.

As all Cupcakes need icing, I decided on two different approaches.  On to the vanilla cakes I put a simple icing made of icing sugar, vanilla essence and water.  I covered each cake liberally, then poured some sprinkles (Hundreds and Thousands) over them.

As I love cinnamon, I felt these deserved better treatment.  I made a cinnamon flavoured buttercream icing, blending butter (at room temperature), icing sugar and ground cinnamon.  In getting the flavour right, and because I hadn’t measured anything, I did make a little more than necessary, but it was worth it.

The cakes tasted great, and have definitely encouraged me to try more smaller cakes in future.  I think I had confined myself to larger cakes because I had become used to baking them.  Now I know I can try smaller cakes without any disasters, I am on the lookout for more ideas.

If you have any, let me know!