What better time to get creative in the kitchen than at EASTER?! So yesterday, in an extraordinary effort to put off doing any work, I did some cupcake-baking. These had a chocolate sponge with both chocolate buttercream icing and plain buttercream icing on top.
I got the cupcake recipe from the All Recipes website which has lots of other great ideas and if like me, you are a bit of a beginner, it keeps the instructions delightfully simple. So I won't go into detail as to how I made the cupcakes as I definitely couldn't explain it better than they have! I will say that I did use Flora instead of using Stork, so I had to use a tad more icing sugar to get my buttercream stiff. I also made chocolate and plain icing, which I then added green food colouring to. I like a bit of a challenge and so I decorated my cupcakes in three different ways; with spring butterflies, easter egg nests and daffodils.
1. Colour the icing using blue food colouring (e.g. Sugarflair Paste Colour) | 2. Knead icing and roll out | 3. Cut out shape as shown above (top left) | 4. Pinch each corner and push inwards to curve sides (bottom right) | 5. Roll tube of white icing & cut to size | 6. Using a tiny bit of water, stick tube of icing down the middle of the wings | 7. Imprint two dots onto white tube & pattern wings | 8. Pipe chocolate icing all over cupcake (No. 30 tip) | 9. Pipe green icing on top (No. 2 tip) | 10. Add butterfly
1. Knead icing and roll out | 2. Split icing into three sections | 3. Colour each section differently using food colouring (e.g. Sugarflair Paste Colour) | 4. Split each section into smaller balls | 5. Roll each ball into an egg-like shape | 6. Pipe green icing all over the cupcake (No. 30 tip) | 7. Pipe chocolate icing on top in a circular manner, like a birds nest (No. 2 tip) | 8. Add eggs on top of the next
1. Split icing into two sections | 2. Colour one section green & the other yellow using food colouring (e.g. Sugarflair Paste Colour) | 3. Roll out yellow section & cut out 1 star per cupcake (top left) | 4. Roll out green section & cut out 3 leaves per cupcake (top left) | 5. Pinch the corners of each shape & push inwards to curve sides (bottom right) | 6. Roll out spare yellow icing into short tubes, with one end slightly thicker | 7. Indent the thicker end of the tube with funnel shaped modelling tool | 8. Stick this to the star shape with a little bit of water | 9. Pipe chocolate icing all over the cupcake (No. 30 tip) | 10. Pipe green icing on top | 11. Add daffodil | 12. Stick leaves into green icing just under the daffodil
1. Sugarflair Paste Colour, £2.00 - 3.00, Amazon UK / The UK Cookshop
2. Tala Icing Modelling Tool Set, £2.48, Amazon UK / Lakeland
3. Tala Icing Syringe Set, £21.50, Amazon UK / Lakeland
4. Renshaw White Chocolate Ready to Roll Icing, £1.99, The UK Cookshop
I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post as much as I enjoyed writing it! If you have enjoyed it, please share it and leave me a comment below as I'd love to know what you think :)
Happy Easter everyone!
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