Gin and Tonic Cupcakes

As promised, here’s a recipe involving our fresh chicken eggs .

As a great lover of gin, I couldn’t help myself from adding it to one of my foodie loves, cupcakes! These fabulous little wonders are a great evening treat that goes with a well deserved  G&T, and that doesn’t have to just be at the weekends 😉 . Whilst enjoyable any time of the week, with this weekend being a bank holiday, what better time to treat yourself. If these have caught your eye, here’s how you can make them. I’ve adapted the recipe from Bake It Instinct:

Ingredients

The cupcakes:

• 175g unsalted butter softened
• 175g golden caster sugar
• 175g self raising flour
• 3 medium eggs
• 4 tbsp tonic water
• 2tbsp gin

The icing:

• 250g unsalted butter softened
• 500g icing sugar
• Juice of one lime
• 4tbsp gin

The decorations:

• 1 lime halved and thinly sliced

Method:

1. Pre-heat your oven to 170c and place 12 cupcake cases into a muffin tin
2. Add the sugar and butter into a bowl and beat together until light and creamy. Make sure to clean down the sides to get all the sugar
3. To this, add the eggs in one at a time and whisking in, making sure each one is fully combined before adding the next
4. Next, sift the flour in, being careful to fold it in and not to over stir it, then stir in the tonic water
   

   
5. Fill the 12 cases about 2/3 full with the mixture, then bake for approximately 20 mins.They should come out golden, springy and a skewer should come out clean
6. Once cooked, remove from tins and place on cooling rack
7. Whilst still hot, pierce each one with a skewer 6 times evenly across the tops and brush as much gin as you like (I went a bit crazy with this step!)
8. To make the icing, soften the butter with a whisk, slowly adding in the icing sugar and whisking until fully combined
9. Add to that the juice of lime and the gin into the icing, whipping again until light
10. Once the cakes are room temperature, pipe the icing on to the cakes using a piping bag and add the slice of lime on top to decorate
    

    

    

    If you have any spare icing, it’s very yummy just to eat on it’s own. Be careful though, it can get you pretty tipsy without you realising it! Happy Bank Holiday from all the chickens. Enjoy 🙂

Thank you Followers!

After a big stint to hand in my Masters project, I’m finally back to writing about the chickens! Yay, I’ve missed being able to be expressive and fun rather than scientific and factual.

So whilst I’ve been otherwise distracted, the chooks have been a bit quiet on the old social media. But that hasn’t stopped people from following them and the girls and myself can’t thank you all enough for the support!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hannah Simmons (@hansims36)

Instagram has exploded, there are now 129 followers keeping up with the girls and their pictures on their account @hannahshens . Their live clucking has also attracted a lot of attention, with 70 followers on their Twitter account @HannahsHens . The slowest grower has been this blog with only 9 followers 😦 .

It’s so easy to follow the girls on any social media, there are links Twitter and Instagram on the side menu here or search for HannahsHens on the app!

And following the blog is super easy too: if you’re on WordPress there’s a button at the very top of the side menu that adds the blog to your Reader. If you’re not on WordPress you can still follow the blog and have an email sent to you whenever a new post is added. To do that, at the top of the side menu there’s a box to enter your email into and WordPress will send you an automatic email to confirm that you want to follow the blog, it’s that simple!

Again thanks to everyone already following. It means so much to all of us at Hannah’s Hens that you’ve taken the time to be part of our little gang and we hope that you are enjoying hearing about the girls!