Jubi-tea Cupcakes

Its the Jubilee Weekend!
Well, it was. But I'm just so kooky that I have to do all my themed posts about 2 months out of season. Better late than never ey? Although technically it is still the jubilee year so HA. 
So lets just pretend for a second that its the beginning of June, the Jubilee weekend.  
Now for those of you non-Brits who have no idea what is going on (have you been hiding under a rock?!) I shall explain.
On the weekend of the 2nd of June, Britain celebrated the Queens' 60 year reign, otherwise known as the Diamond Jubilee.

London got pretty crazy, every shop, house and restaurant had red, blue and white spewing out of its windows and doors.

London Town during the Jubilee weekend

Living in London I felt obliged to go give a little wave to the Queen during the Jubilee boat pageant on the Themes. So the fam and I packed up our scarves and umbrellas and waded our way through the throngs of people to the top of a building central London by the Thames where we had the perfect view of the days proceedings. 

Hello Queeny!

A Very British Cupcake with Handmade Fondant Roses

Recipe adapted from bakingmad.com

3 Earl grey Tea bags/ 3 table spoons of loose tea

120ml Whole milk

140g caster sugar

120g self raising flour

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

40 butter

1 egg

a pinch of salt

Pre- heat the oven to 190 °C

1. Gently heat the milk over a low heat with the tea bags/leaves, leave them to stew as long as possible to get all the flavor possible. 

Watch the tea infused milk get darker...

...and darker...

...and darker.

2.Cream the butter and sugar together, don't worry if its not as creamy as usual you still need to add the milk later. 

mmmm buttery sugar

 3. Add the egg. Because I am a fancy pants and wanted to make these cupcakes extra fluffy, I separated the egg and whisked up the egg white in to a big puffy cloud and then added it to the mixture. To be honest it didn't really make that much of a difference and was more hassle than it was worth.

Magical egg white whisker machine that is actually a milk frother 

Mix in the eggs

4. Add the tea infused milk to the mixture. Remember to strain the tea leaves out of the milk! I stupidly skipped this vital step and it made the cupcakes very bitter and little bits of tea got stuck in my teeth. EW.

Tea leaf reading any-one?

6. Slowly add the flour.

mixy mixy mixer

6. Fill the cupcake cakes 3/4 of the way.

oooo shiny new cupcake pan

7. Bake for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. 

Let the cupcake cool before icing them

Icing
Frost with a standard vanilla butter cream or a cream cheese frosting.

I achieved the tie-dye effect but using GEL food coloring's. 

I painted one side of the piping bag with blue and the other with red and filled the bag with un-coloured frosting. Then I just piped as normal.
Using gel colouring's not only gives a brighter colour but a liquid food colouring will just pour straight out the bag and make a big messy as I discovered.

Tie-dye skillz take 2

Hand made fondant roses
My first attempt at hand made roses here was less than a great success, although the end result wasn't bad it took me about an hour to make 3 little roses. After watching endless YouTube tutorials and taking a trip to the motherland (Hobbycraft) I decided to try again. 
Firstly if you are going to attempt this you must buy the flower-shaped-cutters you can see in the picture below. They made it 10 times easier and twice as fast.

Work in progress

I am not going to try explain to you how to do this because there are a million you tube tutorials which do a much better job of explaining than I ever will. But basically, its not that hard so don't be scared, try it!

Pretty little English Rose cupcakes