Easter Egg Cupcakes

I just had to share these with you all before Easter. With warm homemade hot cross buns digesting in my tummy and prawns on the way for lunch, I'm certainly enjoying the Easter food this year.

After picking up some delicious caramel filled chocolate mini eggs, I wanted to incorporate them into a sweet treat somehow. So I made up a batch of my favourite vanilla bean cupcakes and after filling cupcake cases ⅓ full, I placed a caramel filled egg in the centre of each and topped with a little more batter until cases were ⅔ full. Bake as per normal directions but when checking if done, insert skewer to the side so you miss the gooey egg.

So, so easy and to decorate I piped a buttercream nest, sprinkled with chocolate bits and nestled another caramel egg in the middle. That's 2 easter eggs in one cupcake! Hehe a guilty indulgence. Sorry I have no cross section photos as I was in a rush to take them to work oops.

                                                          Enjoy!

Magical Wizard Mad Hatter Cake

 

I have been absent for a while, baking and decorating a number of cakes and treats so far this year. The first I would love to share with you is this magical wizard  mad hatter cake I made in January for a birthday celebration.

I just love the wizard, he is a happy magical wizard and certainly not a nasty evil one. The birthday girl is into many magical things like rune stones, tarot cards and angels wings and loves purple, so this was the perfect crazy cake for her.

For the wizard I had a bit of help from Debbie Brown's enchanting magical cakes, and for the mad hatter I had help from Lindy Smith's cakes to inspire and desire. The lovely purple was achieved by mixing red and blue paste colours into white fondant, though it is a big effort and I would suggest at least starting with a premade purple and tweaking the colour from there. At least my biceps had a workout!

The angels wings I made by printing out a wing template to an appropriate size, cutting in half into the 2 wings and curving florist wire to the shapes with excess to insert into straws in the cake. I then rolled out gumpaste very thinly and cut out 4 wings with the template to cover both sides of the 2 wires. These are glued together onto the wire. The entire surface is covered with "feathers" which I made using a leaf cutter and veiner, then once dry are dusted with super pearl dust to give a lovely shimmer.