Gourmet Gadgetry: Cupcake and Muffin Maker

The other day, Marcus surprised me by sending me a little present to congratulate me on obtaining a place on a graduate scheme I'd applied to (yay!). I excitedly opened the rather large box to reveal a cupcake maker by Gourmet Gadgetry! 

So, if you're wondering how exactly a cupcake maker works, it's essentially a toasty maker, just for cupcakes. It supposedly creates perfectly formed little cupcakes in a fraction of the time they normally take to bake. I couldn't wait to try it out and so cracked on with some baking!

I baked some very simple lemon cakes. Here's what you'll need if you fancy doing the same:

For the cakes:

100g Butter

120g Self rising flour

120g Caster sugar

2 Eggs

1 tsp Vanilla essence

1 tsp Baking powder

Juice of half a lemon

For the icing:

100g Butter

200g Icing sugar

A few drops of food colouring

Just blend the mixture all together until it's of a smooth consistency. Then, pop your mixture into either your cupcake cases and into the oven (I tend to cook mine at 180C for about 15-20mins) or into your cupcake maker, wait for them to go golden brown and then remove and leave to cool.

While you're waiting for them to cook, you can whip up some icing. Pop your butter into a bowl and whisk until it's smooth. Then gradually start adding your icing sugar and your drops of food colouring. I normally taste it as I go along to see when it's sweet enough. You can then just smear your icing onto your cool cakes or ice them with a piping bag like I did!

I found that the cupcake maker did make the entire process much quicker. The moment I put the batter into each little well, I could see it starting to cook. Once the lid was on, I only had to wait about seven minutes before they were done. Not only that, each cake slid easily out of their well and each was golden brown and identically shaped. Decorating them was very easy as no cake had been able to 'rupture' or had risen oddly. 

I'd definitely recommend Gourmet Gadgetry's cup cake maker (especially to students fighting for oven space!) as it made baking just that bit quicker and easier. There was also no need to buy cupcake cases! I churned out around 28 cupcakes in the end since I just put in more batter once the first round were finished. Luckily, I have three hungry housemates who will be more than happy to eat them all!