Kitchen cupboard cupcakes..

I got a lot done on the jewellery front this weekend, fuelled mainly by a batch of long awaited cupcakes.

I haven't made cupcakes successfully* for about two years, since my cupcake tins were lost during a house move. I kept forgetting to buy new ones, but I finally picked up some at the weekend and realised just exactly what I had been missing!

In an old oven like ours, where cakes take an age to cook through, cupcakes are just the right thing, they cook quickly and properly in about 15minutes, perfect. There isn't a recipe per se for these as I made it up as I went along!

I had a bit of cocoa, a bit of dark chocolate and some coffee in the cupboard that I wanted to use.

I used a standard Victoria sponge recipe, 100g each of butter, sugar and self raising flour and two eggs. It makes quite a thick mixture so it is ideal for adding things too without making the mixture too runny. I added three tablespoons of coffee (2 teaspoons of instant dissolved in a tiny bit of hot water), about 3 tablespoons of cocoa and some chunks of about 100g chocolate cut into pieces. Mixed it up and spooned about a tablespoon in to 12 cupcake cases, gas mark 5 for about 15minutes and they were all done!

I lacked ingredients for icing but they would be perfect with a bit of buttercream on top.

* My unsuccessful attempt involved me thinking that cupcake cases wedged closely together on a baking tray would be absolutely fine. Result - lots of cake batter spilling out of cake cases and onto my tin - not good! You need proper cupcake tins.