Chocolate & Vanilla Cupcakes

I love cake, and I mean all cake. Fruit cakes, coffee cakes, apple cakes, cheesecakes, walnut cakes, Battenberg cakes, angel cakes, marble cakes, carrot cakes, lemon cakes, choclick cakes and every cake in between! And for this I make no apology. However, the tastiest and quickest cakes to make that give you cakey satisfaction within 18 minutes from mixer to plate are cupcakes.

Mary Berry has been my cake hero, second to my Mum, way before The Great British Bake Off. I like to use her all in one tray bake recipe. Makes 24 large cupcakes and is scrum.

Ingredients
225g Softened butter
225g Golden Caster Sugar
275g Self raising flour
4 eggs
2tsp baking powder
4tbsp milk
2tsp vanilla extract

Place all the ingredients into the mixing bowl and beat for 3-4 minutes until light, pale and fluffy. Spoon mixture into the cupcake cases about 1/3 full.
Pop into the oven at 180c for 18 minutes, they are ready when they spring back to the touch and golden. Leave then to cool on a wire rack and then either eat au natural or top with some buttercream flavoured with raspberry jam or lemon curd or chocolate ganache. Ammmmazzing!

For chocolate flavoured cupcakes add 4tbsp of cocoa power to the ingredients above and mix. I like to add a tablespoon of camp coffee as well to get a really chocolatey flavour.

You can also add in 100g chocolate chips to either mix. Or some lemon zest, or desiccated coconut and lime zest. Whatever tickles your fancy.