After Eight Mint Cupcakes

These are fab! (IF you like after eights...if you don't I really wouldn't attempt unless they're for someone else) It's an adapted recipe from another book, changed it quite a lot, brought the ingredients back down to a sensible normal level and I think it works really well!

Ingredients:

16 After eight mints
160ml Water
90g Butter
220g Brown sugar (It doesn't matter what kind really, depends how dark/rich you like it)
2 Eggs
140g Self-raising Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
3 tbs cocoa Powder

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 170°c.

2. Melt the mints and water in a saucepan until smooth, try not to boil it too much, on a low heat is fine.

3. Beat the butter and sugar until fluffy.

4. Whisk the eggs and add them a little at a time (add some flour if it curdles).

5. Add the water and melted mints and whisk until combined.

6. Then add the dry ingredients, carefully folding in the flour. Try not to overwork the mixture.

7. Divide the mixture into cupcake cases and bake for 20-25 minutes.

ICING & DECORATING:

The original recipe suggested a mousse topping for the cupcakes but I thought that would be too rich, however, if you want to try something like that or maybe a minty chocolate ganche then I think that would work too!

I tend to decorate mine with a simple vanilla butter cream (75g Butter, 175g icing sugar and a little bit of vanilla) and then a flower decoration. The picture below I cut flowers (using an icing cutting tool) out of after eights and they looked really pretty.

But I love icing so be inventive, it's often my favourite part of the baking process - so be creative!!

- Emma xxx