vanilla yogurt cupcakes

Eurovision is a very big deal to me and my friends.  For the uninitiated, Eurovision is a European-wide singing competition that celebrates all that is camp, glittery and fabulous.  If you've never seen it, all you need to watch is this video of the entry from Moldova (the song starts at about 40 seconds).  The contest is watched by approximately 100 million people all over Europe and who vote for their favourite entries.  Or the entries from their closest neighbour.  Or political ally.  The UK has, in recent years, done pretty badly as nobody in Europe really like us (the Iraq war had a big effect on the voting patterns.  Seriously) but that doesn't us from rallying behind our entry and a show of patriotic enthusiasm. 

This year, the boy band Blue were representing their UK and their effort was not at all bad.  It finished a respectable mid-table.  The whole thing was won by Azerbaijan (the definition of which countries fall into Europe is somewhat hazy) so we can look forward to a trip to Baku next year. 

*slight hiatus in writing this post while I am trapped in a Eurovision YouTube spiral*

Where was I?  Oh yes, cupcakes.  I was honoured this year to host our Eurovision party.  As it's not a party until there are cupcakes, I made some vanilla yogurt cupcakes with a caramel vodka butter cream.  Half were decorated with red, white and blue sprinkles to represent the UK and the other half were decorated with shamrocks to show our support for our Irish cousins. 

Vanilla yogurt cupcakes (makes 12)

115g unsalted butter, softened

115g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs

250g plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp baking powder

250g vanilla yogurt

1.  Preheat the oven to 180oC.  Line a cupcake tin with paper cases.

2.  Cream the butter, add the sugar and eggs and beat until light and fluffy.

3.  Add half of the dry ingredients, then the yogurt and then the rest of the flour.  Stir until just combined.

4.  Pour the batter into the paper cases and bake for 25 minutes until golden brown.  Transfer to a wire rack and cool.

I was going to make a simple butter cream with a glug of caramel vodka to frost them but there was no icing sugar to be found in West London and so I had to improvise with some ready-made frosting.  Which didn't work so well as it went very liquidy and would not do anything I wanted at all.  C'est la vie.