The Royal Pastry Chefs Shared the Queen’s Favorite Cupcake Recipe

Tim Nelson
·3 min read

If you’ve been watching this space over the past month or two, you know that Disney has been doing quite a bit of recipe sharing while its parks remained closed during quarantine. Naturally, that’s included plenty of breakfasts and baked goods fit for a Disney princess. But now, you can bake some cupcakes fit for a very real queen.

Proving that she’s just like us, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II recently celebrated her birthday under lockdown. While most of us don’t have the luxury of turning 94 at Windsor Castle, a new recipe shared by the royal family’s Instagram account means that we can at least eat the same kind of cupcakes.


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🎂🧁🎈Happy birthday to Her Majesty! To celebrate The Queen's birthday we are sharing a chocolate cupcake recipe from The Royal Pastry Chefs. If you or a loved one are celebrating a special occasion during isolation why not treat yourself to some #RoyalBakes? Remember to share your creations with us! Ingredients for the cake sponges - (serves approximately 15) 15g vinegar 300ml milk 50ml vegetable oil 60g butter (melted and cool) 2 eggs 5ml of vanilla essence 250g of self-raising flour 75 of cocoa powder 300g caster sugar 10g bicarbonate of soda 100g white chocolate chips cupcake cases Ingredients for the buttercream topping: 90g of high percentage dark chocolate 100g butter 125g icing sugar Option to also use Royal icing, instead of buttercream: Royal icing available pre made in shops Add food colouring to create different colours Cake sponge method: -Preheat the oven to 150 C -Combine the flour, sugar, cocoa powder and bicarbonate of soda into a mixing bowl -Whisk the eggs in a separate jug, with the vanilla essence, melted butter, oil, milk and vinegar -Slowly add the wet mixture into the dry mixture, little by little -Ensure the batter is smooth with no lumps -Finally add the chocolate chips (alternatives could be nuts, dried fruit) -Lay the cupcake cases onto a tray -Use a metal spoon to equally divide the mixture into the cases -Bake for around 15-18 minutes, take out of the oven when golden and springy on touch -Leave to cool Buttercream icing method: -Cream the sugar and butter together, until light and creamy -Add in the warm melted chocolate -If you have a piping bag to hand, pipe the icing on the top of cakes for decoration (otherwise gently use a teaspoon or small spatula to ice) Royal icing method: -If decorating with royal icing, roll the icing out and cut into circular disks -Lay the disc over the cupcake and mould to required shape We hope you enjoy! #RoyalBakes 🧁

A post shared by The Royal Family (@theroyalfamily) on Apr 21, 2020 at 6:53am PDT

The recipe comes courtesy of the Royal Pastry Chefs, which sounds like a group of people with a pretty great job. They’ve created some ornately-decorated chocolate cupcakes topped with buttercream icing for the queen’s birthday, complete with various decorative royal insignia. Though the recipe features a potentially daunting list of ingredients, you don’t need to be a great British baker to pull them off.

The real twist when it comes to the cake sponge is the inclusion of chocolate chips, but it’s otherwise a pretty manageable process. And if the idea of making your own buttercream icing is a bit too intimidating, the recipe (rather fittingly) allows you to swap in some pre-made, store-bought royal icing to simplify things.

So if you’re quarantined with an Anglophile or just someone with an upcoming birthday, treat them like royalty with these cupcakes. If it’s good enough for the Queen of England it’s probably good enough for them, too.