Pineapple Cupcakes with Pineapple Frosting (makes 12)

These cupcakes are loosely based on the classic Pineapple Upside Down Cake, which was one of my favourite things as a child to eat. I wanted to bring back some of that childhood nostalgia, and turn them into cupcakes.

These cakes are gorgeous, but the pineapple at the bottom gives your cake a somewhat 'soggy bottom', meaning using paper cases will not work as well. I used baking cups, which you can purchase from my website, www.theshirebakery.com or you can use silicone cake cases, or even put the cake direclty into the muffin tin (make sure it is buttered first). 

Ingredients

1-2 tablespoons sugar

Pineapple chunks in juice (small tin) plus 3 tablespoons of the juice

100g plain flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

100g soft butter

100g caster sugar

2 large eggs

Buttercream Ingredients

125g unsalted butter at room temperature. 

125g icing sugar

125g Pineapple flavoured icing sugar (By Sugar & Crumbs and avaiilable on my website, www.theshirebakery.com)

2-3 tablespoons milk

Firstly, preheat your oven to 180 degrees, 160 fan or Gas Mark 4.  Pop your baking cups on a baking tray, and sprinkle a little bit of sugar into the bottom of them.  Now put the chunks into the bottom of the case like so:

Now cream together your butter and sugar, do this for a few minutes, until it turns pale and super fluffy. 

Now to add your eggs and whisk. It looks a bit funny, almost curdled, but this corrects itself when you put the flour in. 

This is what it looks like before you fold in the flour. Odd, but do not worry!

Now mix in your flour until just combined and add the pineapple juice.  The cake mix smells amazing, very tropical!

I wish you could smell this, it's immense!

Now pop into the cake mixes, until they are two thirds full. 

Now pop in the oven for 15-20 minutes, or until they bounce back when lightly pressed. 

While they are cooling get to making your buttercream frosting. Mix your butter (if it is not soft enough, pop it in the microwave for 10 seconds) with a little bit of icing sugar and gradually add more, then add the milk tablespoon at a time until you get the right consistency.  I used 125g of icing sugar and 125g of pineapple flavoured icing sugar, available on www.theshirebakery.com. 

If you do not have this icing sugar, you could use normal icing sugar and add pineapple juice from the tin used for the cakes.

Then simply pipe onto your cakes. I decorated some of the cakes with tropical fruit flakes, but this is totally optional. 

All you need to do now is eat and enjoy!