Baking with Ro: Galaxy Cupcakes

Hello Everyone! I'm back with more baking adventures thanks to the Nerdy Nummies cookbook, which is helping me with my baking confidence this year. I spent a whole lot of time last week watching Anna Saccone baking videos with her adorable children, a lot of which were cupcake recipes, so I've been craving them so bad all week! As usual, all credit goes to the amazing Rosanna Pansino and her team for creating these. I am simply sharing my experience with the recipe and any extra tips and tricks I learn along the way. 

These cupcakes were actually really fun and so easy to make! I thought the icing would be harder than it was, but they turned out great! Even if you haven't done much baking before, you'll still be able to create these little beauties

This is by far the easiest cupcake mix I have ever made. It's just mixing your dry ingredients, mixing your wet ingredients, then add them together and you're done! No electronics needed for this recipe, which I personally appreciate. There's no bitter chocolate taste to these or any butter, so they're great to make for kids. Here's the recipe:

Chocolate Cupcake Mix: (Makes 24 cupcakes)
1 1/3 cup all purpose flour
2/3 unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
2/3 cup firm brown sugar
4 large eggs
1/3 cup water
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup vegetable oil (I used canola oil)

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees F (160C) and line your muffin tins with cupcake cases. I had to use three muffin tins which hold 6 cupcakes, but you can just do a second batch in the oven if you need to.

In a large bowl, whisk the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Whisk in both the granulated and the brown sugar until evenly combined. If you still have a few lumps of brown sugar, I just used a spoon and flattened the mix until they were gone. 

In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, water and vanilla. Then whisk the sour cream and oil. Make sure your sour cream dissolves and there are no lumps.

Make a well in the centre of your dry ingredients and add the wet mixture. Stir until combined and there are no dry streaks of flour. Be careful to not over-mix it!

Pour the mixture into your prepared cases until they are 2/3 full. I used a 1/4 measuring cup which got a pretty perfect amount into each. 

Bake for 18-20 minutes until your knife or a wooden prick come out clean. 

Leave to cool on a wire rack (and try not to eat them all straight away! ; ) )

I made these on a rainy Sunday morning, but didn't end up icing them until the next day. I had a few errands to do, and the lighting was so poor in our kitchen. The only problem with this was that by the time I got up my brother and Dad had eaten over half of them, so I was only left with about 7 to ice! Remind me to hide them next time.

Once your cupcakes have cooled completely, you need to make a batch of buttercream frosting that comes out nice and thick. Here's a recipe similar to the one I used, which tastes heavenly. Rosanna just uses store-bought frosting, but home-made always tastes so much better to me. Separate into four bowls and add blue, black, pink, and purple coloring into one of each. Remember to add just a little at a time.

Spoon into four separate icing bags (I just used sandwich bags) and cut one corner off. Set up a separate, larger bag with your frosting tip in a tall container.

Here's the trickiest part: Pipe a line of each of the frosting into your larger bag. Try and use a quarter of the bag for each color. I used a bread knife to flatten some of my frosting out to stop it from mixing with the others. It doesn't have to be perfect, mine certainly wasn't but the colors still came out great. I'm really sorry I forgot to take a picture until afterwards! Also, make sure you have a nozzle that is quite big to make sure the colors can come out evenly. 

You'll want to test your icing bag on one cupcake first (or just on a plate) to get it to the point where the different colors start to come together. Ice it in a spiral, going from the outside to the center. It's easiest to hole the bag at the top, to stop the icing from coming out and you having to squeeze the icing down, which might accidentally mix the colors. 

Add your decorations on top and you're done! I used some silver balls and edible blue crystals since I couldn't find any stars. 

I am so happy with how these turned out! Cupcakes are always easy to make, and it's fun to change up the decorating every once in a while. I thought the icing might have been worse, but if it's thick enough you really can't go wrong. 

Make sure to check out Ro's cookbook for more nerdy treats! I am in love with it and it's been amazing for helping me boost my baking confidence. 

What do you like to bake? 

Steph x.