Smurf Cupcakes

Jacqueline has a thing for marshmallows. Especially smurf marshmallows. Edi found a large box of them at one of our local grocery stores a few weeks ago. Jacqueline - the sly girl she is - asked me to hide a few of them away and not to tell her or Edi were they are because she feared that there would not be any left for her birthday to use as a decoration for her cake. I did as she told me and I at some point, when thinking about what to bake for her birthday, I came up with the idea of smurf cupcakes, made of blue dough and white buttercream icing, each topped with a marshmallow smurf. I believe they were a big hit.

Recipe

(Vanilla cupcake recipe from Cake Days by The Hummingbird Bakery)

For the dough:

80g soft butter
280g sugar
1/2 sachet of vanilla sugar
240g flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
240ml milk
blue food coloring

Preheat the oven to 190°C. Line a 12-mould muffin pan with blue paper cases.

In a bowl, mix butter, sugar, vanilla sugar, flour, baking powder and salt with an electric hand mixer on low speed until you have a fine crumbly batter.

Mix milk and eggs and add to the cake batter in three additions while constantly mixing. Scrape down the bowl with a rubber spatula from time to time. Mix until you have a smooth batter. Then, add blue food coloring and mix until it is well incorporated (I used the whole little tube of food coloring).

Fill your batter into the prepared cases. Don't overfill them or they will spill while baking! Two thirds is fine. Bake in the middle of the oven for about 20 minutes. Check with a wooden skewer whether they are done. Let cool completely after baking.

For the frosting:

500g icing sugar
1/2 sachet of vanilla sugar
160g very soft butter
50ml milk
12 marshmallow smurfs

In a bowl, mix butter, icing sugar and vanilla sugar with an electric mixer on low speed until you have a powdery batter. Slowly add the milk while constantly mixing. On high speed, mix until you have a fluffy batter. Then, add the dulce de leche and mix well.

Spread the frosting on your cupcakes with a palette knife and place one marshmallow smurf onto each cupcake.