how to make a million cupcakes (and remain sane)

Picture this: you've got an event coming up and need to make heaps of cupcakes for it. Who you gonna call? Well, not me, because I'm certainly not a cupcake queen. However, I have had a little bit of experience making lots of cupcakes.

This is what I do if I have to make lots of cupcakes:

1. I love recipe at the end of this post. Doubled it makes about 32 normal sized cupcakes.
2. Make myself a beautiful cup of coffee, turn some music on and start baking! It should only take you about an hour to make 100ish cupcakes.
3. Put a few chopping boards out for hot trays, cooling racks for warm cupcakes, bring out the cupcake papers and all your ingredients so you don't need to fuss about running around the kitchen.
4. Use an electric mixer, it'll save your arms lots of work.
5. With the help of a bowl or friend's hands, carefully pour all the batter into a zip-lock bag. This is the BEST THING EVER. Cut a hole a bit bigger than your little finger nail in the tip of the bag and start piping cupcake batter! It's quite runny so when the cupcake paper is full enough, put your finger over the end to stem the tide of chocolate while you move around. If you feel you have to push the batter out, cut a bigger hole. Gravity should do most of it for you.
6. Here comes the tricky bit, when you've squeezed all the batter out of the bag, fold the end over and either peg or tape it in position so that when you pour the next batch of batter in there will be less spillage. It's a little tricky, maneuvering the full bag, however with a bit of practise it's really easy!
7. Use a vivid to mark the bottom of your gluten-free cupcakes. I write a big G on mine.

Try this and you'll never go back to using a spoon. It's so simple.

Yes, it looks a bit gross (I didn't say anything!) but it is so effective and much less messy than using a spoon.

This recipe works really well gluten free, but if I'm making lots of cupcakes I usually just make a small batch of mine first and then make heaps with normal wheat flour. It also works great doubled, to make 32 large cupcakes.

With much thanks to www.thejoyofbaking.com for this recipe.

Chocolate cupcakes: [or sweet cuppin cakes]
1/2 cup of cocoa powder [read the back, some of them contain gluten]
1 cup of boiling hot water
1 1/3 cup of flour
2 tsp of baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
113 grams of butter*
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract

*to make them cheaper, I tried [instead of all that butter] replacing half of the butter with oil. So, if you want to do that just cancel out the 113 gms of butter and replace it with 50gms of butter and 1/4 cup of oil. It works really well.

Preheat oven to 190`C, line 16 large cupcake tins with papers or about 32 mini ones.
In a small bowl stir until smooth the boiling hot water and cocoa powder. Let it cool to room temperature.

In another bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. [If you want, but I couldn't be bothered and they worked out good.]

Then in the bowl of your electric mixer or with a hand mixer, cream the butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating until smooth. Beat in the vanilla. Add the flour mixture [sift if it's G-free!] and beat until only incorporated. Add the cooled cocoa mixture and stir until smooth.

Fill each paper cup two-thirds full with batter and bake for about 16-20 minutes or till risen, springy to the touch and a toothpick inserted into a cupcake comes out clean.
Remove from oven and place on wire rack to cool. Ice when completely cool.