Mars cupcakes

"A Mars a day helps you work rest and play" so when hubby announced his best friend was visiting for a weekend of rock climbing and beer i thought i'd bake Mars cupcakes to keep their strength up!

Now cupcakes have something of a reputation of being airy fairy, delicate and generally a feminine love, so to make them more manly i chose red velvet sponge with black glace icing.

This recipe makes 12 Mars cupcakes:

Base
125g softened butter
125g caster sugar
100g self-raising flour
3 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tbsp milk
2 medium eggs (seperated)
2-3 tbsp red food colouring

Topping
350g icing sugar
black food colouring
2 mars bars (cooled in fridge)
gold lustre dust
2-3 tbsp boiling water


First pre-heat the oven to 190c

Mix the caster sugar and butter until softened before adding the sifted self-raising flour, 2 egg yolks, sifted cocoa powder, 2 tbsp milk. Once these ingredients have been well mixed, fold in the whipped egg whites - i've found that this creates a lighter sponge. To make the red velvet, just add 2-3 drops of red food colouring...simple!

Once the Mars cupcakes have been baked for 12-15 minutes, they should look like this:

Cool the cupcakes on a rack for at least an hour, then get started on the black icing. I decided upon glace icing, purely because hubby prefers it to buttercream, which in my opinion would have been a better choice!!

Its best to make the icing as thick as possible for easy spreadability, so this is approximately 1 tbsp of water to every 100g of sifted icing sugar. Add the black food colouring, you need quite a bit so it doesn't look grey, then mix until smooth.

Spread the icing with a butter knife, adding the slices of cooled Mars bar before it sets. Finally, sprinkle with gold lustre dust.