Sunday 24 April 2011

Easter bunny cupcakes

I wasn't really going to bother with Easter cupcakes as our house was already overflowing after a baking frenzy last week (more to come on that in another post), however I got a new tip and had a glut of clementines in the house so decided last night to whip up something delicious with a slight Easter theme!

The cupcakes themselves were based on a lovely recipe I saw on fellow cake enthusiast The Caked Crusader's blog. The recipe can be found here - I halved it and got 6 cupcakes and instead of using orange juice I used the juice of lots of freshly squeezed clementines. Simple.

I used my own vanilla frosting recipe, halved and replaced the milk with clementine juice. Then came the fun part - piping with my new nozzle.  Well it would've been fun if it hadn't been about 100 degrees in my kitchen and the frosting wasn't going soupy after a couple of minutes. I persevered and it kind of worked - but the heat still kept melting it when on the cupcake, so I went against everything I believe and put them in the fridge to stay non-soupy and set about the very simple decoration I planned.

Warning the photographs below contain scenes of bunny decapitation - look away now if easily shocked!

First you take one of these


the delicious Malteaster bunny shaped treat from Malteser. Now unwrap him....


and then...

chop his head off with a lovely pink knife. Or any knife you have. The main point is you must decapitate the bunny.

After this it's pretty straightforward. Take your cupcake and sit the decapitated bunny head on top amongst your grassy frosting. Again, simple.


As you can see my grass frosting didn't quite work out as I'd hoped but I know it will next time - when my kitchen isn't warmer than the centre of the earth! It still manages to look rather cute in my opinion - especially when you remove the cases.

And as for the taste - you can see from the yearning in the Lindt Bunnies eyes he wants one because they taste really good. The clementine juice gives a really moist cake, it's possibly one of the moistest cakes I've made. The flavour was rather subtle (the outside of the clementines weren't really good enough to grate some peel in as I would usually have done), but really tasty.


If you're a bit too squeamish to chop the head off a bunny for your own cupcake pleasure then feel free to decorate in any other way you choose.

Finally, I can confirm the bunny was still decapitated this morning, it had not, in the spirit of Easter re-attached it's head and 'come back to life'. So we ate it. 

9 comments:

Unknown said...

I think your grass looks lovely!

Our flat is hot in the winter as well so anything that I bake with fruit or cream cheese I put in the fridge. I left a cake in my cake dome overnight in the living room once and it was fuzzy with mold the next day!

Maggie Bob said...

Anne, they look amazing, and now I absolutely *must* bake somethin with clementines in. Yum!

I heart cupcakes said...

Kelly- thanks - it was so difficult to get it perfect as as soon as I piped it it melted!! Oh gosh - that is bad. Yeah in this heat my "never put cake in the fridge" mantra goes out the window!

Maggie - thanks. I highly recommend the use of clementines in baking. It's a subtle flavour but SO moist!

The Caked Crusader said...

They look great - I loved the orange cakes too. I know what you mean about trying to make buttercream in a hot kitchen. Luckily my weekend's baking was more robust!

Katie said...

lol, poor bunny. looks delicious though

Manny said...

These were every bit as delicious as they look, amother baking triumph :) Such a great idea about the grass frosting too!

Cupcake Crazy Gem said...

These are great, I am obsessed with Malteser bunnies and even got my mom to send some out to me in the Caribbean! I never even thought to use them in baking...what a good idea! and I think your grass looks great...despite your hot room!
That's funny you got similar comments, it seems crazy people go out of their way to bother writing rude comments! perhaps it's an angry cupcakery owner that we gave a a bad review to! lol
Thanks for your comment on my table :)

I heart cupcakes said...

CC - thank you so much. The recipe was amazing and I shall be making it again. I thought the clementines worked well in it.
I saw your baking - a real bobby dazzler!

Katie -he suffered so we could enjoy cake!

Manny - glad you liked them and for once your flavour guess "orange" wa correct ;)

Gem - they are delicious aren't they. Nearly as good as the Maltesers you get in Celebrations.
Some people have too much time on their hands- I really thought it must be someone I'd been rude about but now they've left you a comment too I think it's just some pathetic weirdo!
your desert table looked lovely!

Abbie said...

Love this post! Those malteaster bunnies are amazing, even better when decapitated ;) yum!