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LOVE BUNS (CUPCAKES)

In another time I'd have been satisfied with calling these Valentine's Day buns but, as the saying goes, if you're going to get wet, you may as well go swimming.

Recipe posted by Nigella

Ingredients

FOR THE BUNS:

125g soft butter
125g caster sugar
2 eggs
125g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons real vanilla extract
2-3 tablespoons milk

FOR THE TOPPING:

2 egg whites
4 tablespoons golden syrup
100g caster sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon real vanilla extract
Heart-shaped sprinkles to decorate

Method

Serves: Makes 12

Take everything you need out of the fridge in time to bring to room temperature - this makes a huge difference to the lightness of the love buns later - and preheat the oven to gas mark 6/200°C.
Put all of the ingredients for the buns, except for the milk, into a food processor and blitz until smooth. Pulse while adding the milk down the funnel, to make a smooth dropping consistency.
Divide the mixture into a 12-bun muffin tin lined with muffin papers or heart-patterned cases, and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes. They should have risen and be golden on top; you want a little peak if possible.
Let them cool a little in their tin on a rack, and then take them carefully out of the tin to cool in their papers, still on the wire rack.
Now for the topping. Here there is a slight dilemma, as you'll make more than you need for the 12 buns, but if you halve the quantities, you won't have quite enough. If you're making these for you and your one true love, then I presume you won't need all 12 of them, in which case you could freeze most of the buns to be iced and eaten at some later date, and halve the topping ingredients to decorate the few you want today.
This is a topping that has a kind of meringue base, by which you whisk egg whites over heat until they're stiff and gleaming. Think Mr Whippy. So make a doubleboiler with a bowl that will fit snugly over a saucepan of barely simmering water, and put all of the ingredients for the icing, except for the vanilla and sprinkles, into the bowl. Whisk everything with an electric beater until the icing becomes thick and holds peaks like a meringue. This will take about 5 minutes, so be patient.
Take the bowl off the saucepan and on to a cool surface and keep whisking while you add the vanilla. Then keep whisking until the mixture cools a little. You want a proper peaked and whipped covering here, so spoon some icing over each bun, and then dollop another spoonful over in a swirly fashion. Immediately shake over your choice of sprinkles, as the icing will set very quickly. Indeed, these look rather like stage prop buns or the fake ones that some bakeries used to keep in their windows, so plasticky and gleaming are they.