Chirpy Chick Easter Cupcakes

Well Easter is nearly upon us, so I thought I would get my Easter baking underway this weekend as I'm going away for a week from Good Friday. For this reason I thought I'd stick with some simple Easter bakes this year and I also tackled Simnel Cake, Hot Cross Buns and Traditional Easter Biscuits last year.

I love these Chirpy Chick Cupcakes they're so cute and perfect for kids. You can use any vanilla cupcake recipe but I particularly like this one from the Hummingbird Bakery. You could also flavour the cupcakes, lemon would be good!

I piped a swirl of buttercream on top of each cupcake with a Wilton 1M nozzle. Buttercream is easy to make, it's just 500g of icing sugar to 250g butter or any 2:1 ratio. I also add 1/2-1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and a tablespoon or so of water if it needs loosening.

To make the little chicks on top I used yellow sugarpaste which was mixed with some CMC. CMC stiffens up the paste to make it a little more robust and it means that the circles won't flop when placed on top of the buttercream. I cut out the circles using an Ateco cutter a few hours before I needed them and then left them to harden for a while.

For the wings it is the same sugarpaste with CMC. Each wing was cut out with a heart cutter and then the cutter was twisted slightly to one side and the paste cut through again which gave the wing shape. The eyes are little balls of black flowerpaste and the beak sugarpaste with CMC which was cut out freehand. To finish off the chicks, little flowers were added. These were cut out of white flowerpaste which I coloured up and then PME blossom cutters gave the shape.

 

The design for these cupcakes comes from Seasonal Cupcakes by Carolyn White which is a very reasonably priced little cupcake book and I think the finished product is very effective. The desgin can also be modified to make a number of different bird cupcakes. I previously made some Christmas robin cupcakes which were similar.

These cupcakes are my entry into this month's Calendar Cakes with the theme being Easter Extravaganza. Calendar Cakes is hosted here at Laura Loves Cakes on alternate months with Dolly Bakes. If you'd like to enter you can find all the details here.

 

I'm also entering them into Utterly Scrummy's Easy Easter Baking Blog Hop.



Cute Christmas Cupcakes

These cute cupcakes could be a case in point when it comes to how addictive baking and cake decorating can be. I decided last night that I would whip up a "quick" batch of Christmas pudding cupcakes, but 6 designs and several hours later this was the result! I have to say I was a little cross-eyed by the end!

The cupcakes are vanilla using my new favourite cupcake recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days recipe book. The result is a lovely moist sponge, probably due to the addition of milk:

• 80g unsalted butter
• 280g caster sugar
• 240g plain flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 240ml whole milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
• 2 large eggs

Preheat your oven to 190c/170c fan/gas 5. Then slowly beat the butter, sugar, flour, baking powder and salt together until they form a fine breadcrumb consistency. Next beat together the milk, vanilla essence and eggs. With your whisk on a slow speed, pour three quarters of the wet mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well before adding the remaining milk mixture and beating to a smooth consistency. Bake for 18-20 minutes.

For regular cupcakes the recipe calls for the cases to be two thirds full but for these cupcakes you don't want the cake to rise too far above the top of the case so I filled them a little less. You should be able to make 12-16 cupcakes from this recipe, if not more.

To decorate I buttercreamed the top of each cupcake and cut out circles of sugarpaste using Ateco circle cutters before adding the embellishments. For one or two of the elements, regular sugarpaste would be too soft, so I added some CMC to the paste in advance which causes it to set harder and therefore allows you make things such as the robin's wings and reindeer's antlers! The antlers also have a spaghetti support inside!

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... 12 yummy cupcakes and a partridge in a pear tree!