Sugar and spice cupcakes

These lightly spiced, deliciously moist cupcakes and the recipe are both created from scratch. I used the baker's formula for cakes provided in Bakewise: the hows and whys of successful baking with over 200 magnificent recipes by Shirley O. Corriher to get the correct proportion of flour, sugar, egg and milk. See also my post on Baker's formula for cake.

These cupcakes don't really need to be iced, but if you wanted to, you could ice them with a butter icing with maybe a dash of cinnamon.

Ingredients

• • 150g self raising flour

  • 200g muscovado sugar

  • 50g room temperature butter

  • 2 eggs

  • 150g milk

  • 1/2 cinnamon quill (or cassia bark)

  • 3 cloves

  • 3 cardamon pods

  • 2 cm piece dried ginger

  • 1/2 star anise

Method

• 1. Roughly crush the spices.

  2. Put the milk and spices in a small saucepan and heat gently to boiling point. Set aside to cool and infuse (about 30 minutes to an hour is good).

  3. When the milk has cooled to room temperature, strain and discard the spices.

  4. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius (or 170 degrees for fan forced).

  5. Line a 12 hole cupcake pan with paper cases.

  6. Add the sugar to the milk and stir to dissolve.

  7. In a mixing bowl, beat together the flour and butter until the mixture looks like sand and set aside.

  8. Add the eggs to the milk and whisk to combine.

  9. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and beat on low for a couple of minutes until all ingredients are combined. Do not overbeat.

  10. Spoon mixture into the paper cases to two thirds full - about a rounded dessertspoon should do it.

  11. Bake in the pre-heated oven for about 15-20 minutes - until golden brown and cooked. You know thecake is cooked if it springs back when pressed gently with a finger or an inserted skewer comes out clean.