Easter Cupcakes

Easter is great for a for a few things... Guaranteed roast dinner, bank holiday weekend night out and another excuse to eat copious amounts of chocolate. I'm here to help you out with the last one - of course! I brought my lovely friend and the cupcake queen, Libby, in to the kitchen for this recipe. We mostly made this all up as we went along but we ended up with some extremely cute cupcakes perfect for eating all yourself or gifting out to friends and family instead of (or as well as) Easter eggs.

Find lovely Libby on instagram @hallaxxb and give her lots of love!

These are a classic chocolate sponge with buttercream icing so you don't really need Easter as an excuse to bake these!

We also purchased some bunny ears and wore them for the whole process and I highly recommend you do the same. I feel this was a pivotal part of our success! Unfortunately there was no photo evidence, you will just have to trust my assurance that we were looking extremely good and completely owning our Saturday night.

Make about 20

Prep Time: 40 minutes

Bake Time: 12 minutes / time to dance to at least three Spice Girls songs

Ingredients for cake:

• 300g self raising flour
• 1 tablespoon baking soda
• 370g caster sugar
• 90g cocoa powder
• 3 large eggs
• 300g softened salted butter
• 300g milk
• 150g dark chocolate
• Pinch of salt

Ingredients for icing and decorations:

• 340g softened salted butter
• 690g icing sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla essence
• Blue food colouring
• Royal icing in white and pink (maybe about 50g of each, I didn't measure sorry)
• 100g dark chocolate
• 3 shredded wheat cereal biscuits
• Chocolate mini eggs

Method for cake:

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Bring the milk to a simmer in a saucepan on a low heat. Be careful not to boil or burn it. Break the dark chocolate into small pieces. Once the milk is hot take it off the heat and add the chocolate. Leave for a few minutes and then whisk until smooth.

Sift the flour into a large bowl along with the baking powder and pinch of salt. Add the eggs, butter and sugar. Begin to mix together. You can mix with a spoon by hand or by using an electric whisk. Once the mixture has mostly come together, start adding the melted chocolate and milk mixture a bit at a time. Keep adding and whisk until smooth. This is quite a thick and moussey batter so try not to over mix and thereby knock all the air out.

Line a cupcake tray with cases of your choice. Fill each case about 3/4 full with batter. Tap the whole tray on the work surface a few times to help level the batter and remove any air bubbles. Place in the preheated oven and bake for 12 minutes or until a knife comes out clean. Once baked and the kitchen is smelling gorgeous, place the cakes on a cooling rack and resist any temptations to dive in already (I did not do this and I don't actually have any regrets, I'm just advising you to be better).

Method for icing and decorations:

For the chocolate nests: melt the dark chocolate. Break down the shredded wheat and mix into the chocolate until it is all coated. I made little moulds out of tin foil (almost like a shallow egg cup kind of shape) and fashioned the little nests on these and then placed them in the fridge to set. Don't make them too big as they need to fit comfortably on the cakes.

For the buttercream icing: whisk the softened butter in a large bowl until it has a smooth and easy consistency. Sift in the icing sugar and whisk until smooth. You may have to add the icing sugar in batches. Once combined add the vanilla. A little bit at a time add the blue food colouring. You want a very pale blue so that it is similar to a duck egg blue colour.

For the bunny ears: Roll out both the icings until about 3mm thin. Cut out bunny ear shapes in the white and smaller ones in the oink. Use a little water to stick the pink to the white. Add little kinks and mould over the tips on some of the ears to add more shape. Lie on a piece of foil and then place in the fridge to set.

Assembly:

Once the cakes are cooled and all your decoration is prepped then we are very close to eating time!

Use a piping bag with a large round nozzle and pipe icing onto every cupcake. Add a good blob to each cake - don't be stingy. Ice the worst looking cupcakes first...Libby and myself found this out so you don't have to waste good cake!

We used a pastry brush to very carefully flick blue food colouring on the iced cakes to add a speckled egg effect.

Gently push bunny ears into some cakes and garnish the others with the nests filled with mini eggs. Have fun with it!

I hope you have a fantastic Easter weekend. Please let me know if you decide to make these chocolate cupcakes and how you get on. I think they would be super fun to make with younger family members as an Easter morning activity. Do you have any other ideas for Easter themed decorations that we could try next time? For now, tuck in your napkin and enjoy!

Love, Rachael x