GLUTEN FREE EASTER CUPCAKES

Easter is coming!! You have probably seen already the dozens of chocolate eggs lining supermarket shelves, with creme eggs and mini eggs both making their yearly appearance. Why not celebrate with some homemade nest cakes! These scream Easter to me, with the pastel colour icing and the cute chicks in a flake nest. They looked great and tasted delicious – oh and of course, they are gluten free.

Ingredients

For the cakes:

• 12 cupcake cases (brown)
• 115g / 4oz caster sugar
• 115g / 4oz butter or margarine
• 115g / 4oz gluten free self raising flour (I am using Doves Farm)
• 2 eggs
• 3 tablespoons milk
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder

For the icing:

• 115g / 4oz butter
• 280g / 10oz icing sugar (sifted)
• A couple of drops of vanilla essence
• 1 tablespoon milk
• A couple of drops of food colouring – I used green and yellow food colouring from Lakeland as they are really pigmented and don’t change the consistency / taste. See HERE.

For the decoration:

• 2 cadbury chocolate flakes
• A bag of mini eggs
• x12 sugar chicks. I bought mine from Ebay, see HERE.

MAKES 12

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C / Gas Mark 6.
2. Mix all the cake ingredients together in a large mixing bowl using an electric whisk, to make a smooth batter.
3. Fill the cases half way full and bake in the oven for 15-20 mins.
4. Poke a skewer through the sponge – if it comes out clean the cakes are done.
5. Transfer to a wire rack and leave to cool completely.
6. Meanwhile make your buttercream. Beat the butter and vanilla essence with an electric whisk and slowly incorporate the icing sugar through a sift, continuing to whisk until you have a smooth but not too thin icing. You can modify the consistency by adding more icing sugar to make it thicker, or more milk to make it thinner.
7. Separate the icing into two bowls and add the food colouring to each and mix well to evenly combine.
8. Put the icing into piping bags and pipe onto the cooled cakes. I did 6 yellow and 6 green.
9. Before the icing sets, crumble up the flakes with your fingers or a knife in a bowl and place into the icing to form the nests, leaving enough room to pop on a sugar chick and a mini egg.
10. Enjoy!

These are good fun to make and end up looking really impressive, with really quite little effort.

I hope these give you some Easter baking inspiration and you love this recipe as much as I do!

K

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