Mmmm... Cupcakes!

Tonight, we are going to celebrate two of our good friends' 30th birthday and, for the occasion, I decided to make celebratory cupcakes. Bon anniversaire les filles!

The cake recipe comes from the new edition of Les recettes de Janette. Janette Bertrand is a famous and influential Québec tv personnality who was celebrating her 80th birthday in 2005. The book reads like a mother's -- or, in her case, a grand-mother's -- cookbook, complete with annotations and all, and I am glad Santa brought it to me this year.

This morning, when I was browsing for cupcake recipes, I saw this one, titled «Les petits pets de Magella» (a très original way of calling cupcakes in Québec). In the notes at the end of the recipe, Madame Janette says that she has been making these cupcakes since she was 6 years old and that her grandchildren beg her to make the same cupcakes for them. I figured that was a tried and true recipe -- and I was right!

The icing is a basic butter icing, from the Pillsbury cookbook.

Cupcakes

1 egg
1 1/2 cup sugar*
1 cup milk
A piece of butter the size of an egg
1 cup flour
Vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 cup of chopped walnuts or pecans**
1 cup of raisins**

Beat sugar with butter. Add egg, flour, milk, vanilla, baking powder and salt. Beat well. Add nuts and raisins. Pour into paper-lined muffin tins. Bake at 350 F for approximately 35 minutes.

* I used organic cane sugar and the it did not dissolve well in the batter. Regular sugar would be better in this case.
** I omitted these today.

Butter icing

Beat together 2/3 cup softened butter, 4 cups icing sugar, 3 to 5 tbsp milk or cream and 1 tbsp vanilla. Makes enough icing for a 2-layer cake or a 13 x 9 in cake.