A BOUQUET OF CUPCAKES
March 09, 2018
Happy Fridays guys! Second baking post on the run, aren't you lucky?
And what is more perfect for Mothers Day than a bouquet of flower cupcakes?!
They look fabulous and taste delicious; and we're sure your mum will love them. The cupcakes are lemon and are fluffy as ever. You will need one or more flower nozzles to create this decoration but these are cheap and easy to find online, and it's definitely worth it!
Ingredients:
(makes 16 cupcakes)
For the cupcakes...
6oz butter
6oz caster sugar
3 eggs
1 lemon, zest and juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking powder
6oz self-raising flour
For the buttercream...
7oz butter
14oz icing sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
(we made this much as we were using several piping bags and this makes it easier, but you can make less if only using one piping bag)
Pre-heat the oven to 200°C/180°C Fan/Gas mark 6, and line a cupcake tray with cupcake cases - we had to re-use our tray for 4 extra cupcakes.
Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, and then beat in the eggs, vanilla and zest and juice of 1 lemon. Add in the flour and baking powder, and mix until combined and smooth. Divide this mixture between the cupcake cases leaving each case around 2/3 full. Place into your pre-heated oven and bake for 15 minutes, or until golden brown and springy to the touch.
Once out of the oven, transfer the cupcakes onto a wire rack to cool completely.
While the cupcakes are cooling, you can make the buttercream. Simply beat together the butter, icing sugar and vanilla extract until smooth. This is the base for the buttercream and from here you can choose to decorate however you would like. We ended up making 6 colours - green for a grass base, and 5 colours for the flowers.
For the grass base, mix a small bowl of buttercream with green food colouring and then spread thin layer onto each cupcake using a small spoon or ideally a small palette knife.
Separate the rest of your buttercream into bowls and mix as many different colours as you would like. We chose to make two different colour combinations for our flowers - one with two colours and one with three.
To make the multi-colour effect buttercream, spoon the buttercream into lines onto a large piece of cling film, letting the colours overlap. Then, pull over the cling film in a way to make a kind of buttercream log, twisting both ends to seal. Cut off one of the twisted ends before dropping it into a piping bag fitted with the flower nozzle of your choice.
These are the nozzles we used and the flowers they create, but there are so so many online that it's hard to choose. If you're just beginning, this set from Lakeland would be perfect, and it comes with couplers for single and tri-coloured icing, if you don't want to try our clingfilm technique.
You can mix up the colours and shapes as much or little as you want, piping the flowers straight onto the green base.
If you follow these steps, you will end up with the spongiest and most delicious lemon cupcakes you have ever eaten. They are just so pretty and we love the way they look with a mix of colours and flower shapes. There's an endless variation of colours, shapes and layouts you can do this so we just can't wait until we can have another go!
Thanks so much for reading this post!
These are so pretty and perfect for Mothers Day and we just can't wait to hear what you -and you mum - think!
Please let us know if you give these a go, by tagging us on any of our social media (all links are at the top of the page or in a box to the side!)
Seeing pictures of you baking our recipes is always so exciting - we love it!
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Lots of love,
Antonia and Imogen x
