Mother’s Day cupcakes recipe

Our mother’s day cupcakes have a delicious vanilla sponge, strawberry jam centre and an easy buttercream icing. 

This cupcake recipe is perfect if you don’t know what to buy as a mother’s day gift. There’s nothing quite like a homemade gift and these cupcakes taste and look amazing. You can also make them at any time of year and change the flower decorations or just keep the cakes plain. 

Ingredients

• 150g caster sugar
• 150g butter
• 140g self-raising flour
• 10g cornflour
• 3 medium eggs
• 30ml milk
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 12 tsp strawberry jam
• Ready-made flower and butterfly decorations

For the buttercream:

• 110g butter, room temperature
• 500g icing sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 60ml milk

Method

• Heat the oven to 160C (140C fan, Gas 3). Line a 12-hole muffin tray with cupcake cases.
• Put the sugar, butter, flour, cornflour, eggs, milk and vanilla extract into a large bowl and beat with an electric whisk until smooth.
• Divide the mixture evenly between the paper cases, filling each to 3/4 full. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until springy to the touch. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before leaving to cool completely on a wire rack.
• When the cakes have cooled, use an apple corer or a sharp knife to remove the middle from each cake, saving it for later. Add 1 tsp of strawberry jam to the centre of each cake and replace the piece of cake, pushing it down on top of the jam.
• To make the buttercream icing: Add butter, icing sugar and vanilla extract to a large mixing bowl, then beat for about 5 minutes with an electric whisk until smooth. Pour the milk in gradually and only if you need to loosen the mixture. You want it to be thick enough to hold its shape but also loose enough to pipe.
• Transfer the icing to a piping bag with a star nozzle attached. Pipe a swirl of icing in the centre of each cupcake, then starting at the outside edge of the paper case, using it as a guide, follow it around, piping around the swirl in the middle of your cake and build up into a taller swirl. This stops the swirl from collapsing.
• Top immediately with the sugar flowers and or butterflies.

Top tips for making  Mother's Day cupcakes

The cupcakes can be made ahead and iced a couple of days ahead but will taste the best when eaten as close to when they were baked. If you don’t like vanilla you can flavour the icing with lemon zest, almond essence or even a dash of gin. For tips on how to make your own sugar flowers plus much more, continue reading below. 

It’s important to thoroughly and efficiently mix the ingredients for the cake batter. The best way to do this is by using an electric hand mixer like this one from Kenwood. 

KENWOOD Handmix Lite Hand Mixer Silver - View at Currys

Using an electric hand mixer will make the process of combining the cake batter ingredients very easy and should take under 10 minutes. We love that it also comes with a set of hooks for kneading dough. 

Explore our collection of Mother's Day cupcakes if you’d like more design and flavour inspiration. You might also like these Mother’s Day cake ideas or our Mother’s Day recipes for kids.