Milo Cupcakes with Condensed Milk Icing

I remember the first time I baked a cake from scratch. It was a chocolate cake from a kids cookbook and I was so excited because I was baking it for my grandpa's birthday. But I was also lazy and so I skipped an instruction that my 12-year-old brain deemed unimportant - I didn't sift the flour. As a result, my cake batter was lumpy with little clumps of flour that no amount of beating could seem to get rid of, and instead of being gorgeously chocolatey, the cake had a bit of a flour taste to it.

Since then I've learnt to follow baking recipes pretty much word for word: if it says to sift the flour I will sift the flour, if it says to use 125g I will use not 124g or 126g, but 125g. And if it says to use icing sugar I will use icing sugar instead of something else.

I've also learnt that you can have a bit of leeway with recipes if you have good reason for it. If the dough seems far too wet to be able to be rolled out nicely, add some flour. If a batter doesn't taste like what it should, add some more flavouring to it. For me, when it comes to baking, following instructions, tasting your dough/batter and a bit of common sense usually leads to a good result :)

When I read a recipe for Milo cupcakes with condensed milk icing on raspberri cupcakes, I instantly wanted to make them and taste the awesome combination of Milo and condensed milk in cake form. Even though it was so easy (just dump the ingredients in a food processor and away you go!), I made sure I followed the recipe carefully so I didn't end up with a floury, lumpy cake. And it paid off, because I was rewarded with the smell of Milo wafting through the kitchen and soft fluffy cupcakes that had an awesome crunchy top. The cupcake is also the perfect vehicle for the sweet condensed milk icing and these were so addictive that they were polished off in a couple of days! (I swear I didn't eat them all....)