Cake Angels Archives - HodgePodgeDays

Last week I made a really, really lovely lemon and elderflower gin meringue pie and I had a little bit of the lemon filling left over. Usually I save this to spoon over ice cream, but as I was in a baking mood, I thought I’d make some Lemon and Elderflower Surprise Cupcakes. My son who loves to bake got in on the action too, so he can vouch that they’re great to bake with kids.

If you don’t happen to have some lemon and elderflower gin meringue pie filling left over, you could use some lemon curd instead. If you opt for the lemon curd option, but feel you’re missing out on the elderflower gin, you could always pour yourself a refreshing Lakes Distillery gin to have on the side.

Recipe: Lemon and Elderflower Surprise Cupcakes

I would normally ice my cupcakes with a buttercream swirl, but I had a squeezy pouch of Cake Angels Zingy Lemon Frosting in the cupboard, so I thought I’d use that. I thought it would swirl like buttercream, but I couldn’t get it to pipe the way I wanted it to. In the end I put enough frosting on each of the lemon and elderflower surprise cupcakes to cover the top and let in run so it was more of a glaze than a cupcake topping. If you don’t have this, I think these cupcakes would be lovely with a lemon drizzle topping.

Recipe: Lemon and Elderflower Surprise Cupcakes

To make the cupcakes, I used my fail-safe sponge recipe which worked an absolute treat. The recipe is enough for 12 good-sized cupcakes. Here’s how we did it.

Lemon and Elderflower Surprise Cupcakes

Ingredients:
150 g caster sugar
150 g softened butter or margarine (I use Stork)
3 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
1.5 tbsp milk
150 g self-raising flour
1 level tsp baking powder

Leftover Lemon and Elderflower Gin Meringue Pie filling – or – half a jar of lemon curd

Cake Angels Zingy Lemon Frosting – or – lemon drizzle icing

Method:
Heat your fan oven to 190c. In a large bowl, beat your butter and sugar together until fluffy (I used a hand mixer). Add the eggs, milk and vanilla and combine. Add the flour and baking powder and mix together until you have a smooth batter.

Put 12 cupcake cases in a muffin or bun tin, divide the mixture generously between the 12 cases and bake in the oven for 15 minutes. Once bakes, remove and leave them to cool.

Once cool, using a sharp knife cut a deep circle out of the top of the cake, remove the circle and fill the hole with leftover lemon and elderflower gin meringue pie filling or lemon curd. Cut some of the cake off the cupcake lid and put the lid back on top of your cupcake.

Recipe: Lemon and Elderflower Surprise Cupcakes

Cover with the Cake Angels Zingy Lemon Frosting or a spoon or two of the lemon drizzle icing if you’re using that. Leave to set and then serve with a nice cup of tea, or a large G&T.

Oh, and the surprise? The lovely, slightly runny lemony loveliness in the middle of the cupcake.

Recipe: Lemon and Elderflower Surprise Cupcakes

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Recipe: Lemon and Elderflower Surprise Cupcakes

October is one of my favourite months. I love the autumn colours and Halloween is always a good excuse to get the mixing bowls out to create something spooky to celebrate the occasion. We don’t do trick or treating, but we usually have a party for some of the small boy’s friends; or a little Halloween tea party of our own. I tried my hand at making some spooky Halloween cupcakes for the occasion and I was quite pleased with how they turned out.

Spooky Halloween Cupcakes

The cupcakes were really easy to make (you can read my fail-safe sponge cake recipe here) and they take very little time to knock up with a food mixer; though I sometimes mix my cakes by hand if I can’t be bothered washing the mixer afterwards.

Once my little cupcakes had cooled, I made a buttercream. I made quite a lot of buttercream because I had several batches of cakes to decorate for various occasions. To make my buttercream I put 500g of soft unsalted butter in the food mixer and beat it for a minute or two to soften it up properly. I then added 500g of sifted icing sugar and beat them together until they were thoroughly combined. As you can see it’s just equal amounts of each ingredient, so depending on how much buttercream you need you can make more or less.

Spooky Halloween Cupcakes

I then put half of the buttercream in a tub in the fridge to use at a later date. I put a quarter in a piping bag with a piping nozzle (I use a large star) and popped that in the fridge to firm up a little. With the remaining quarter of icing (still in the food mixer) I added orange food colouring; just a few drops at a time until you get the Halloweeny orange colour you want. Once you’re happy with the colour, pop it in the fridge to firm up a little; though not so much that you can’t pipe it. I always find freshly made buttercream is too loose to pipe with until it’s had half an hour in the fridge.

Spooky Halloween Cupcakes

I made three different kinds of spooky Halloween Cupcakes…

With the orange buttercream and using a palette knife, I smoothed the buttercream on top of the cupcake. Choose cupcakes which don’t rise above the edge of the paper case for this. I then took a Cake Angels Halloween cake topper and placed it in the middle of the cupcake; then sprinkled some of the Cake Angels Halloween sprinkles on. The small boy enjoyed helping to decorate the cakes like this, almost as much as he enjoyed eating them.

Using my large star piping nozzle I piped icing onto the Halloween cupcakes and topped them with a cake topper; adding sprinkles where I felt like it. I used both the plain white buttercream and the orange buttercream for this.

Spooky Halloween Cupcakes

These Witches Hat Halloween Cupcakes were a bit of an experiment. I’d spotted some ice cream cones in the reduced section in a local shop. I bought some black get food colouring and spent some time the night before carefully painting my ice cream cones black. I left them to dry overnight.

When it came to icing my witches hat cupcakes; I piped orange icing (for hair) onto the cupcake, then carefully pressed the hat/cone onto the icing. To decorate; I dabbed some buttercream onto the back of one of the Cake Angels decorations and stuck that to the hat. If I’d thought it through a bit more I would have made a buckle and belt for the hat out of royal icing. I will next time.

Spooky Halloween Cupcakes

These spooky Halloween cupcakes were lots of fun to make and would be a great centrepiece for a Halloween party. They were tasty too – too tasty. They didn’t last long before they were spirited away into our bellies!