Easter Cupcakes

So my predicament of how to “beat” my 2012 Easter design has haunted me a lot this year. It’s a funny one, I often feel the need to think of something new and original for annual festivities, even if I adored my designs from the year before.

So with that in mind, this is what I created this year:

I found the mini-mini eggs in a supermarket and decided they would be the centrepiece of the design. Originally I wanted to make lots of little Easter baskets to sit on top of the cupcakes but I decided it would be too time-consuming to make large quantities so settled on little cornflake nests, something that we see a lot here in England around Easter. They are probably the first food thing you are taught how to make as a child and I certainly have very fond memories of melting chocolate and stirring in cornflakes which I relived while making these mini versions.

The little nests turned out to be quite fiddly but I like how they look – perhaps not as much as my last Easter design, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. There is always next year…

These little cakes were for Easter 2012.

I found the little Easter bunnies, chicks and egg chocolates in Aldi and set about thinking how to use them in a cake design. I ended up making cupcakes rather than a large cake as they are easier to divide in an office and can be left about as if from the Easter Bunny!

One of my pet hates with this sort of design is when people pick off the wrapped chocolates and leave the cake, but there was something really pleasing about the green grass cupcakes before I put on the Easter chocolate.

I’m sure there are plenty of other designs in my future that start with this lawn of cupcake… Golf! Horses! Gardening! (you get the idea)

The only thing about this Easter design is that I’m at a bit of a loss on how to out do it this year. I’m always on the look out for interesting sweets and chocolates to use in decorating and have found something new but I don’t know if I can think of a design to beat these. Watch this space…

Last Easter my mum asked me to decorate her traditional simnel cake for the family. I wasn’t allowed to freestyle (as I am with the family Christmas cake) so had to stick with the traditional 11 marzipan balls to represent the Disciples of Christ (minus Judas). I didn’t have a blowtorch so stood there for ages browning the marzipan with a hob lighter(!) I wouldn’t recommend it as a technique, but here is the result, to prove I can be traditional… with extreme duress.