Easter Cooking – Snowy Easter Cupcakes

I was looking for some inspiration for being “creative” with Easter cooking this year and I found some really good recipes. One website that was a brilliant resource for creative cooking for the kiddies, is the Annabel Karmel website: http://www.annabelkarmel.com/recipes/easter. I love the chocolate Easter egg nest cake idea: http://www.annabelkarmel.com/recipes/easter-recipes/chocolate-easter-egg-nests and the Easter Chick Cupcakes are amazing: http://www.annabelkarmel.com/recipes/easter/chick-cupcakes.

We made our own variations of cupcakes in the Constant household, I like to call them the “Snowy Easter Cupcakes”. Daddy made a very yummy basic vanilla fairy cake mix – but put it into muffin cases and cooked it for a little longer. There is a basic recipe on the Annabel Karmel website for vanilla cupcakes : http://www.annabelkarmel.com/recipes/cake-recipes/easy-cupcakes.

Decorating

Once the cupcakes are cooled and ready for decorating, there are a few simple steps to getting them ready for eating: chocolate buttercream icing (it is Easter after all), sweets for decoration and the all important white chocolate. To start with you have to chop those peaks off the cupcake,  this is so that the icing sits on a flatter surface – but also so that the icing has a little hole to sit in:

Next its time to mix up that chocolate buttercream.

Buttercream Mix

It’s the icing that makes them special. Swirl it on using a piping bag and nozzle – but  practise on a plate first

Beat 110g (4 oz) butter until soft, then beat in 110g (4oz) icing sugar, a tablespoon at a time and then beat in quarter tsp vanilla, 60g (2oz) melted and cooled milk chocolate and 2 tbsp cocoa powder.

A top tip is to use the back of a spoon to scoop out the buttercream and spread it on top of the cupcake.

Then finally, add a sweet of your choice, we used mini eggs / marshmallows / halved chocolate eggs and some of them used the sponge (like a butterfly cake):

Then the final thing to do, to create that snowy effect – simply grate white chocolate on the top of the cupcakes and hey presto! you have yourself a Snowy Easter Cupcake…