Christmas Cupcake Recipe
Christmas Cupcakes
1-Mincemeat Cupcakes 2-Fig and Ginger cupcakes
100g butter/margarine
100g caster sugar
100g self raising flour
2 eggs
pinch salt
2tbps mincemeat 1 crystallized ginger stem finely chopped
1tbsp finely chopped candied peel 6 chopped dried figs
4 chopped dried figs 1tbsp finely chopped candied peel
pinch ginger pinch ginger
Beat the butter/marj until soft then add the sugar and salt and beat until smooth and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat until smooth. Then add the sifted flour and combine evenly. Add the mincemeat, peel, figs and ginger and mix thoroughly.
Divide the mixture into 16 cupcake casings and bake at 180ºC for twenty minutes until golden brown.
For the icing, make butter icing with brandy and a pinch of ginger:
150g butter
300g icing sugar
1.5tsps brandy
1 pinch ginger powder
Beat the room temperature butter until soft then sift in the icing sugar and mix carefully to a smooth paste and add the brandy and ginger. Spread or pipe onto the cupcakes to decorate.
Fig and ginger cupcakes
Chop the stem of crystallized ginger extremely finely and add with a couple of teaspoons of the ginger syrup to the basic cupcake mix with the chopped peel and figs
The Techy stuff:
For the photographs I set up my mini studio with two strobes at minimum power (one with softbox and the other with an umbrella), set the camera to f1.4, 100ISO and 1/160s for the ingredients images. For the main cupcake image I just used one strobe aimed at the wall to reflect low light onto the table, and had two sets of fairy lights in the background. In order to blur the background, the aperture was f1.4 again, 100ISO and 1/125s. Camera is Canon 5D mkii, with a 50mm f1.4 Canon lens. I also adjusted the white balance to warm the tones. Props include old crockery from various junk shops with dried orange slices, tinsel, fake ivy, old books and fairy lights.
