Quick and Easy Easter Bakes

This edition of “Quick and Easy” is a little different as in the UK at least we have a couple of traditional Easter bakes which I’ve decided to feature here.

Recipe Ideas
Let’s deal with the traditional bakes first.
One of the most important parts of Easter in the UK are Hot Cross Buns. These are gently spiced buns filled with currents and topped with a cross. These buns are steeped in superstition and are believed to bring luck and cement friendships, and most importantly they are really tasty!

Traditionally they are full of currents but shops are now full of interesting twists on the classic which include additions such as chocolate. So why not try making classic hot cross buns or some modern twists? Me and my mum love apple and cinnamon buns, here is Paul Hollywood’s recipe. I made these the other day and they taste delicious!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/hot_cross_buns_74750

Secondly we have Simnel Cake; this is another deeply traditional Easter bake in the UK. This is a rich fruit cake topped with a sheet of marzipan and 11 marzipan balls. These balls represent the 11 apostles of Christ minus Judas. As an extra there is also a layer of marzipan hidden inside the cake. I’ve never eaten Simnel Cake as I don’t like fruit cake but my mum says it is really yummy, I’m planning to make one next year.
Fancy having a go yourself? Here is a really easy recipe from baking queen Mary Berry
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/easter_simnel_cake_82449

Want something a little less traditional and more family friendly? Well I think you can’t go wrong with chocolate cupcakes. Or how about making mini Simnel Cakes? Or for a great recipe that children can try, how about chocolate nests? Made in exactly the same way as chocolate cornflake cakes, just swap the cornflakes for all bran cereal and add a few chocolate eggs.

The shops are also full of cute biscuit cutters, so why not pick up a set and make some lovely iced biscuits. Good shapes are chicks, rabbits and eggs, which naturally can be iced to look just like Easter Eggs.

Simple Decorative Touches and Themed Cakes
Easter is a pretty easy theme to attribute to a cake, so I’ve combined these two sections into one.
Obviously the easiest thing to do is to just throw sprinkles at a cake, so how about finding some adorable little rabbit or egg shaped sprinkles? Or top cakes with chocolate eggs and little fluffy chicks. Some of my cake books have brilliant instructions for cakes that have been iced to look like Easter Eggs and rabbits. One day I’ll get round to trying those out!

So there we go, a quick post on some easy Easter bakes. I’m sorry this post is so late and kind of short when compared to other Quick and Easy posts but as I said yesterday Easter just crept up on me this year. I think this is because this is the first time in years that I haven’t had to stress about exams and essay deadlines at this time of year!

Decorating Tutorial: Easter Nest Cupcakes

I almost completely forgot that it is Easter this weekend, easy to do when there is snow on the ground in March! Though as I write this the sun is coming out which is nice, I’d almost forgotten what it looked like! So sadly I haven’t prepared much Easter themed content, but I do have a couple of things prepared starting with this tutorial on Easter Nest cupcakes.

These cupcakes are absolutely adorable and are so easy to make, I think they’d be great for children to have a go at. So let’s get started!

You will need
1 batch of cupcakes, I used double chocolate cupcakes.
Icing sugar and green food dye
Chocolate frosting, I used a tub of Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge frosting as I was feeling lazy
1 bag of mini chocolate eggs
Bird cake toppers, one for each cake
Piping bag and star shaped nozzle

Step One

Mix together the icing sugar with a splash of water and some green dye, mix well. You want a thick icing that is slightly runny, I can’t give quantities as I just dumped some icing sugar into the bowl! Cover each cake in the icing and leave to dry, I left mine overnight.

Step Two

Fill the piping bag with the frosting. Then pipe a blob of frosting onto the middle of each cake.

Step Three
Pipe one continuous spiral of frosting around the blob. Or pipe a circle around the blob, and then pipe a second circle on top of the first one. Finally add a couple of chocolate eggs to each nest and insert the cake toppers.

I hope these instructions make sense and that you have fun making these cakes. If you make these please let me know I’d love to see your results!

Layout changes

Hi there,
As you can see from the shiny new banner at the top Princess Cupcake is getting a new layout! About time eh?

While I work on this there might not be any new posts for a week or so. But soon I shall be back with a cute new layout and some new content.

See you soon bakers!
Charlotte

Happy Pi Day!!!

As many of you are probably aware March 14^th is Pi Day, for those who don’t know this day is dedicated to the mathematical constant pi (π). Why? Because if you write the date the American way, (3/14) you get the first 3 digits of pi.

So in honour of this truly great number I made some mini apple pies or are they apple pi’s? Ok I’ll stop now

For some reason my pastry decided to rise a lot,
so these looked a lot neater before they went into the oven...

To make these I just used some leftover short crust pastry I had lurking in the freezer and a couple of dessert apples that needed eating up. So yeah this isn’t a proper recipe really.

Makes 6 mini pies

Ingredients

half a block of short crust pastry
2 dessert apples: peeled, cored and finely chopped
2 dessertspoonfuls of light soft brown sugar
cinnamon to taste
small knob of butter

Method
Roll out the pastry and cut out 6 circles, line a 6 hole cupcake pan with these circles. Cut out 6 extra small circles for the pie lids, then using the leftovers cut out the pi symbol (π). Use a template or go freehand like I did! Then wet the back of each symbol with a little water and stick them to the pie lids.

Melt the butter and gently fry the chopped apple in it for a couple of minutes until the apple starts to soften. Remove from the heat and put into a bowl, add the sugar and cinnamon to the bowl and stir well. Divide the mixture evenly between the pies and then top each pie with one of the lids and push down gently.

Bake in a preheated oven at Gas mark 6/ 200 C for 20 minutes. Leave on a wire rack to cool. 

Nerdy Nummies

Continuing with the nerdy theme of yesterdays post, I thought I'd make a quick most to alert you all to the most brilliant Youtube channel I have ever seen.

The channel is owned by Rosanna Pansino, and she does the most amazing series called "Nerdy Nummies". In which she makes some fantastic nerdy themed food, my favourites are the Tetris cookies. This girl is a genius, and most of the things she makes are viewer requests (On the subject of which, seriously fangirls stop suggesting One Direction cakes, there is nothing nerdy about them!). Her channel is pretty popular but if I have only just discovered it I figured that some of my lovely readers probably haven't seen it yet!

Her channel can be found here http://www.youtube.com/user/RosannaPansino
And here are the amazing Tetris cookies

I hope you all enjoy her videos, I can't wait to try out some of her recipes. If any of you know of any other cool baking channels, why not share them in the comments?

Snapshots: Lord of the Rings

So it's time for another edition of snapshots and this one continues in my nerdy theme.
Out of boredom at the weekend I decided to make and decorate some muffins and figured that a Lord of the Rings inspired design would be cute. So here are some slightly nerdy chocolate and ginger muffins.

This one is called "A Shortcut to Mushrooms". It features a pale green meringue frosting and adorable little sugarpaste mushrooms (made out of leftover grey from the Companion Cube cake).

I think these are really cute, but next time I make them I need to make a better coloured frosting, it needs to be more grass like in colour. I'll also make more mushrooms in different sizes and perhaps some little daisies just to add a hint of colour into the design. 

And these are called "One Ring to Rule Them All" (V1). Like the mushrooms these also have meringue frosting, and sugarpaste rings. The rings were made of yellow sugarpaste which I then brushed with gold luster dust. 

These are called V1 because me and my mum thought up a much cooler way to do this design, which I will get round to making soon. 

I'm so happy that these came out ok, I have so many other awesome ideas for nerdy cakes (mostly LOTR at the moment) that I can't wait to get started on! And before I forget, just wanted to say, chocolate and ginger muffins? Not that nice, I think they would have been better if they only needed powdered ginger. The addition of stem ginger in syrup is a bit much in my opinion. 

Monday Recipe: Peanut Butter Cup Cupcakes V1

Wow that’s a mouthful! As a fruit hater, my brother is never impressed by all my fruit cupcakes. So he decided to set me some challenges and this is the first one I’ve actually completed! United by our love of American candy (especially Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups), he set me the challenge of making Reese’s cupcakes.  These are my first attempt at the challenge and were made to accompany his massive birthday cake.

This is Version 1 of the recipe, kind of a beta test really! I have 2 variations which I need to try next, but that will have to wait until he buys a jar of peanut butter (I actually hate the stuff so I refuse to buy any).  As usual this recipe is designed for use in a cupcake maker and will make 6 fairy cake sized cakes, the recipe can easily be scaled up and should work in an oven equally well.

Ingredients
1 large egg
30g/1oz Self-rising flour, sifted
20g/1oz coco powder, sifted
50g/2oz Caster sugar
50g/2oz Softened butter or margarine
6 Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in miniature size (removed from paper cases!)

Method
Cream together the butter and sugar then beat in the egg. Fold in the flour and coco powder, then put a small blob of cake mix into the bottom of each cake cases and put a Peanut Butter Cup in each case (obviously on top of the cake mix blob). Divide the rest of the mixture evenly between the cake cases and bake in the cupcake maker for approximately 10 minutes or in the oven at Gas 4/180 C for about 15 minutes. The cakes are ready when a skewer inserted into the thickest part of the cake comes out clean! Try and avoid stabbing the chocolate when you check.
Leave on a wire rack to cool.

These are tasty as is but are also great topped with a cream cheese frosting.