Easter Cupcakes

Tomorrow is Good Friday and Lloyd has the day off. Hopefully we are going out boating with R&V, but if this falls through we'll probably go to Matauri Bay for a bit of surfing. I tried boogie boarding last weekend and adored it. Lloyd bought me a board and I'm desperate to try it out. Regardless of what we end up doing, I wanted to make some easter cupcakes to share. 

I went for rich chocolate with vanilla buttercream icing. 

I used this recipe - which you can halve if you don't want to make as many. I tend to make a full batch and freeze half. 

INGREDIENTS

This makes 24-27 standard sized cupcakes

2 cups sugar

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa (best quality available)

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1 cup whole milk

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 teaspoons vanilla extract (best quality available)

1 cup boiling water

Directions-

Line  tin with paper liners.  Heat oven to 180C

Into the Kitchen Aid (or mixer!)  bung together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt and mix a bit.

Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla.  Beat on medium speed for one minute.

Stir in boiling water.

Fill papers 2/3 full with batter.  ( use one of those old fashioned ice cream scoops)

Bake cupcakes for about 18-22 minutes. ( mine took 16)

Cool completely on wire rack before frosting.

I used my tried and tested vanilla buttercream recipe 

• 
  
• 220g salted butter, softened
• 4 cups icing sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 to 5 teaspoons of cream or milk - for this recipe I didn't use any milk, it took that much green food colouring!
• Again, you can scale this down. Or just make a huge batch - I bake so often I just make lots and freeze any leftover.

I used the wilton tip with all the holes in it to make the grass. The wee eggs are bought ones. I thought about making some tiny white fondant flowers as well, but thought that might be overkill so left them as they were.