Earl Grey Tea Mini Cupcakes

Looks like I forgot to tell you about the cakes I made five days ago for my friends' housewarming party. Their party went from 11am, starting with a house blessing, to later in the evening. I planned to get there mid-afternoon, giving me enough time to sleep in then to make cakes. Even though I'd spent time looking through cookbooks the day before, I hadn't yet made up mind when I went to make the cakes. I found I had the most ingredients for the Earl Grey Tea Cupcakes. I decided to make them mini so people could just have a little bite (or several). The recipe, from the Hummingbird Bakery "Cake Days" cookbook, called for three earl grey tea bags. Anyone who knows me would know that might be a problems, as I have a penchant for loose leaf tea. Luckily I found some in a box in my extensive tea collection and I was on my way. Not that it mattered too much, as these are "American-style" cupcakes, so the icing often calls for an unhealthy amount of butter, so I needed to pop up to the shops after I cooked them to get some butter... and some icing sugar (lucky I checked before I left). It went quite well, though the batter was very runny. In the general comments in the book, however, they did note that many of their batters were, so I continued on and they came out quite well. I had to guess a cooking time as I was making them small and my oven automatically goes to 10 minutes on the timer, so I choose that. It was perfect! Then, after my shopping sojourn, I made the icing. Thank goodness for my KitchenAid mixer, saving my arms all that pain of creaming butter and sugar. The icing also had tea-infused milk in it, but overall the taste was subtle. By the time I got to ice them, I was running late, so I rushed and they were by no means pretty. But I managed to get rid of most of the 48 cupcakes in the three or so hours that I was at the party (I left another eight for my hubby, his dad, my brother-in-law and a friend who were fixing our workshop roof). Some people even had four or five cupcakes each. I like the recipe, but I probably won't try it again too soon as there are much more popular flavours to be tried. Like red velvet...