Easy Butter Free Cupcakes

This week I was sent some OXO Good Grips products to review - a metallic bowl, balloon whisk and cupcake icing knife. So I could put them all through their paces I made some cupcakes without my trusty Kenwood K-Mix and mixed them by hand using my new bowl and whisk. To make life a bit easier I used this recipe below which uses vegetable oil instead of butter. I've tried hand whisking a recipe with butter before and it's not fun! This recipe is really easy to do so it's a good one to do with the kids.

Ingredients

280g Self-raising flour
280g Caster sugar
125ml Vegetable oil
240ml of milk
2 eggs
2tsp vanilla essence

Method

- Preheat the oven to 180C and line a cupcake tray with cupcake cases
- Mix together the flour and sugar in a large mixing bowl
- In a separate bowl or jug, mix the oil, milk, eggs and vanilla together then pour this into the flour and sugar mixture
- Beat everything together with a whisk until well combined
- Spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases and bake for about 15-20 minutes
- Put cakes onto a wire rack to cool

That's the basic cupcake recipe, you can use your usual frosting to decorate or buy ready made frosting if you're short of time. I made a vanilla buttercream in my K-Mix as it's the best way to get a lovely smooth buttercream and it's much quicker too.

So how did the OXO products fair? Well I was really impressed! The whisk was easy to handle and comfortable to use and mixed the ingredients really well. My son had a go at mixing and he found the whisk easy to use and he enjoyed beating the mixture.

I liked the fact that the bowl has a rubber base to give it a good grip even on wet surfaces. My usual ceramic mixing bowl always takes a lot of scraping with a spatula to get the mixture out but I found it really easy to scrape the metallic interior. You can also use electric mixers with this bowl, I don't like using them with my ceramic bowl as it marks and scratches it. The plastic exterior means it protects your hands from extreme temperatures and it's also easy to clean.

As for the palette knife, well I think I need a bit more practise! I'm used to piping icing onto cupcakes and not really done much freehand icing before so I did find it a bit tricky. I liked using the knife though, it was easy to use and I'm definitely going to practise more with it as it's a good skill to have and, when done well, cupcakes can look amazing decorated in this way.

My son and daughter had a go at icing the cakes too but they were more interested in eating the cake toppings and the icing, though my son did have a go with the palette knife.

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Disclaimer: These OXO products were provided to me free of charge in order for me to review them, however, the opinions expressed in this review are independent and my own.