Baking with Butterkist

Butterkist had clearly heard of my crushing disappointment at not making it into the Great British Bake Off. Ok, that might be my fault. One year I will actually send my application form in. Although, I fear that I might have left it too late now. I am not happy that GBBO is transferring to Channel 4. However, Butterkist offered me the perfect opportunity to get over my disappointment. They challenged the kids and me to get baking with popcorn.

As my two adore popcorn this was a challenge we were more than happy to accept. Sadly, there would be no Paul Hollywood in my kitchen. Actually, I would have found his sardonic comments a bit off-putting. I like to think that if he quipped something about my soggy bottoms that I would admonish him for being rude. However, I suspect that I would probably end up blubbing into my popcorn. I was still able to recreate the Mel and Sue experience though as I had Youngest and Oldest who love a bit of banter and they are very good at keeping me in check in the kitchen.

First of all we decided that we needed to come up with our own recipe. Now Butterkist sent us a huge box of popcorn and there are so many different flavours to choose from. One of them is a new flavour called ‘Choc Mallow’. There are no words to describe how much we are in love with this flavour. We might have even argued over who got to eat it all. It was that good. I wanted to show off and talked about creating a showstopper. Perhaps the Eiffel Tower made entirely out of popcorn, or how about a 3-d popcorn sculpture of Jersey? The kids were not impressed with my suggestions. In the end we decided that we would go for cakes. We settled on making our very own ‘Cinema Cupcakes’. We thought these would be perfect because they are individual little treats and, therefore, perfect for parties, lunch boxes and cinema nights. They would also be perfect for our #bloggersbeatingcancer virtual coffee morning. We chose a chocolate cupcake with caramel icing and decorated with our new favourite Butterkist popcorn - ‘Choc Mallow’. I can confirm that they were absolutely delicious and, best of all, so easy to make. I have made a step by step film of us making the cakes and you can find the recipe below.

Cinema Cupcakes with Butterkist Popcorn (makes 12)

Ingredients:

For the cupcake

• 140g Light Muscovado Sugar

• 100g Self-Raising flour

• 50g Cocoa powder

• 1 tsp Baking powder

• 50g Chocolate Chips

• 3 tbsp Milk

For the icing

• 80g Butter softened

• 400g Icing Sugar sieved

• 3 tbsp Milk

• 100g - 200g Caramel Sauce (depending on sweet tooth)

• A large bag of Butterkist popcorn. We went for Choc Mallow

Method

• Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Fan, or 180 on the normal setting. Line a 12 muffin tin with paper cases.

• Tip the sugar, flour, cocoa powder and baking powder into a large bowl

• In another bowl whisk together the eggs, oil and milk.

• Add the eggs, oil and milk to the large bowl with your dry ingredients and stir together until well combined.

• Add the chocolate chips and stir together

• Divide the mixture among the paper cases and cook in the middle of your oven for 20 minutes

• Once the cakes have cooked, leave them to cool for a good couple of hours

• For the icing, cream the butter until is really soft and fluffy.

• Add a small amount of icing sugar and combine

• Keep adding the icing sugar slowly, adding milk in between your additions

• If you are worried that the mixture is too hard then add some more milk. On the other hand if you think it is too sloppy then add more icing sugar

• Now add the caramel sauce. I would start with 100g, taste and then add more if you think it is needed. Make sure you mix the caramel sauce through

• Pipe the icing onto your cakes. You don’t need to worry if it looks untidy as the kids will be decorating it with the Butterkist popcorn.

• Pass the cakes onto your kids and get them make it with as much as popcorn as possible!

• Then get 2 tbsp of caramel sauce and drizzle over the top. This will help stick the popcorn to the cake

Voila, enjoy! We loved these cakes. Mr C even took some into work with him! Let us know what you think of them in the comments below.

Disclosure - please note that this is a collaborative post but all words are my own

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