Royal Icing (8 page)

Lavender Honey Cupcake

Makes 12 cupcakes

1¾ cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1½ teaspoons dried lavender

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature

1 cup sugar

¼ cup honey

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

2
⁄
3
cup milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line muffin pans with cupcake wrappers.

2. Combine flour, baking powder, lavender, and salt in a medium bowl.

3. In a mixing bowl, beat the butter on high for about a minute. Add sugar, honey, and vanilla, then the eggs, one at a time, beating until they are combined. Add in the flour mixture and milk, alternating. Beat about three to four minutes until the batter is smooth (but don't overbeat!).

4. Fill each cupcake wrapper two-thirds full and place in oven. Bake for approximately eighteen to twenty-two minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool for fifteen minutes before frosting.

Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting

12 ounces (one package and a half) cream cheese, room temperature

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

4 cups confectioners' sugar

Directions

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla extract until smooth. Add the powdered sugar, one cup at a time, and beat until frosting is creamy and smooth. Pipe onto cupcakes or apply with a frosting knife or spatula. If you want to get fancy, add food coloring to the frosting and pipe it to look like flower petals!

Chocolate Cupcake

Makes 12 cupcakes

1½ cups all-purpose flour

¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1/8 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons butter, room temperature

1½ cups sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¾ cup milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line muffin pan with cupcake wrappers. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

2. In the large bowl of a mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs, one at a time, then the vanilla.

3. Add the flour mixture and milk, alternating between them. Beat three to four minutes until the batter is smooth.

4. Fill each cupcake wrapper two-thirds full with batter, and bake in oven for eighteen to twenty-two minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and allow to cool for approximately fifteen minutes before frosting.

Salted Caramel Frosting

1 stick (half cup) salted butter

2 cups dark brown sugar

2/3 cup heavy cream

¼ teaspoon salt

3 cups confectioners' sugar

Directions

1. Ask an adult to help you melt the butter in a small saucepan over a low flame, stirring constantly. Once the butter is entirely melted, add brown sugar and heavy cream. Stir constantly over medium heat until sugar is dissolved. Add salt. Allow mixture to bubble for exactly two minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Beat in confectioners' sugar, one cup at a time, until the frosting is smooth and creamy.

Rainbow Tie-Dye Cupcake

Makes 18 cupcakes

This recipe calls for a basic vanilla cupcake batter.

3 cups all-purpose flour

1½ teaspoons baking powder

¾ teaspoon salt

12 tablespoons (1½ sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

1½ cups sugar

4 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1¼ cups milk

Box of assorted food coloring

1. Preheat oven to 350°F and line muffin pan with cupcake wrappers. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

2. In the large bowl of a mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Scrape down the sides.

3. Add eggs one at a time, then the vanilla. Beat until combined.

4. Add the flour mixture and milk, alternating between them. Beat for about three to four minutes, but be careful not to overbeat!

5. Now that you've prepared the batter, it's time to color it! Pour the batter from the large bowl into five smaller bowls. Use two to three drops of food coloring in each bowl to create a bright color. Stir batter in each bowl until it is one color. I like to do red, yellow, orange, blue, and green, but feel free to mix your own shades.

6. Using a tablespoon to scoop out your batter, layer the different colors into each cupcake wrapper until it is two-thirds full. You can use a toothpick to lightly swirl the colors around.

7. Bake for eighteen to twenty-two minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool for approximately fifteen minutes before frosting.

8. Feel free to frost your masterpieces with any flavor icing you like!

When I was in London I
had
to try Hummingbird Bakery! I had heard amazing things about their “American style” cupcakes, and I love their cookbooks! So I went to their shop in Soho and I wasn't disappointed. There were a lot of fun flavors to choose from, everything from Carrot, Red Velvet, and Chocolate Malt (with malt-ball crumbles on top), to my personal fave, Black Bottom. The cake is rich and chocolatey, and in the center is a delicious surprise: cheesecake! The frosting is cream cheese too, and it's topped with chocolate cake crumbs. In a word:
yum
!

Since
Royal
Icing
was inspired by my London trip, I asked Hummingbird Bakery's founder Tarek Malouf to answer some questions. He's sold
millions
of cupcakes in his stores, so I figured he was the perfect London cupcake expert to ask!

Carrie: When and why did you decide to open Hummingbird Bakery in the United Kingdom?

Tarek:
I opened the first bakery on Portobello Road in Notting Hill in 2004, but the decision to open an American-style bakery was a while in the making. The idea of setting up a bakery came to me in early 2002. I was visiting my aunt in North Carolina, and she took me to several traditional American bakeries that served pies and homemade cakes. The smell of fresh baking in these places was amazing. During that time, my sister was living in New York, and we used to go and eat lots of cupcakes and traditional American goodies every time I'd visit her. Taste buds awakened, it was then that I realized I wanted to open my own bakery in London.

Carrie: How did you come up with the name?

Tarek:
The hummingbird is native to the Americas, and it feasts on the sweet nectar of flowers. This image of a beautiful bird with a love of sweet things just seemed to fit the bakery I wanted to create.

Carrie: How many bakeries do you have now? I heard you're in Dubai!

Tarek:
We have six bakeries in London located in Notting Hill, South Kensington, Soho, Spitalfields, Islington, and Richmond. In addition to this, we have an international franchise with two (very soon to be three) stores open in Dubai.

Carrie: What is the difference between a cupcake in the United States and a cupcake in the UK?

Tarek:
Well, the cupcakes we bake at the Hummingbird Bakery should be very familiar to anyone from the United States! Moist cake with a generous amount of frosting. Other cupcakes in the UK tend to be a bit smaller, with a thicker, pastier icing instead of buttercream or cream cheese frosting. That's why ours at Hummingbird have been received so well!

Carrie: I think my favorite flavor at Hummingbird was the Black Bottom or the Salted Caramel. What's yours?

Tarek:
I have to say, although we're probably best known for our Red Velvet, I also love the Black Bottom cupcake the most! For anyone who hasn't tried it, this is a rich chocolate sponge with a spoonful of chocolate-chip cheesecake baked into it, topped with cream cheese frosting.

Carrie: What are your most popular cupcakes?

Tarek:
Red Velvet cupcakes are our bestsellers, followed closely by Black Bottom cupcakes.

Carrie: What are some of the most
unique
cupcakes
Hummingbird
Bakery
has
created? Who comes up with the ideas?

Tarek:
We are lucky enough to have a product development team that experiments with sponges and frostings to create the cupcakes that eventually reach our counters. We always try to bake cupcakes that we know our customers will love, so we haven't made too many crazy flavors, but, that said, we have created themed cupcake collections that take their inspiration from things as diverse as hot drinks (Earl Grey Tea cupcakes) and a carnival (Popcorn cupcakes). Sometimes the decoration will be what makes our cupcakes really stand out. I particularly loved the range of Milkshake cupcakes that we created. All of them had little red-and-white-striped edible bendy straws.

Carrie: Cool! What makes a
perfect
cupcake, in your opinion?

Tarek:
The perfect cupcake has to be freshly baked. For me, there is no competition with a cupcake that is freshly baked and frosted on the same day. All our cupcakes are baked fresh on-site at each of our bakeries on the day. This way, the sponges stay lovely and moist, and the frosting is freshly whipped and deliciously smooth. Also, all our cupcake sponges are completely covered in frosting so that the sponge doesn't dry out.

Carrie: Have you been to the States and sampled any cupcakes here?

Tarek:
I visit the States very often and have been doing so since I was two years old. I have a lot of family there and I have a very sweet tooth, so they all know that when I visit, they need to take me to check out the best desserts! My last visit to the United States was part of my preparations for the fourth cookbook we have coming out to follow
Home
Sweet
Home
. It will gather together some of my favorite all-American baking recipes, so obviously I needed a few taste tests while I was there.

Carrie: Do you think you'll ever bring Hummingbird Bakery to the United States (pretty please!)?

Tarek:
Maybe one day. We are currently working hard on our international franchising project and continue to search for suitable locations in the UK and abroad. When I opened my first bakery a decade ago, I never anticipated the demand that would come from overseas for our cupcakes and desserts, but if there's a market for them, we'll do our best to meet that need.

Carrie: How many cookbooks have you written? What is the most recent one?

Tarek:
We have three cookbooks that have all hit the bestsellers' lists:
The
Hummingbird
Bakery
Cookbook
(2009, Ryland Peters & Small),
Cake
Days
(2011, Collins) and
Home
Sweet
Home
(2013, Collins). We have a fourth one in the making, which is due out in 2015.

Carrie: How did you get your start in baking? Did you like to bake as a kid? Did you attend culinary school?

Tarek:
I'm not a professional baker myself, but I am a very enthusiastic taster of baked goods! I did make stuff for bake sales at school, but I definitely prefer eating cupcakes and sweet goodies. I guess it's cleaning up the mess in the kitchen that puts me off baking too often at home! I did my fair share of baking along the way in the first couple years of opening my business.

Carrie: What is your advice for a kid who wants to grow up and open his or her own bakery?

Tarek:
A clear idea of what you want to achieve is crucial to success. Baking is a very competitive industry, so you really have to know what sets you apart and not lose sight of this vision. And start small! Selling yummy things from a stall or farmers' market is easier and probably more fun at first than the hassle of setting up a real shop. Let things grow organically and slowly.