Baking Spring Cupcakes!

The snow has gone and the daffodils are out – its felt like a long wait but Spring is on its way. So, this week I made some Spring cupcakes to celebrate!
Ingredients
(makes 12)

-Cake
110g butter
110g caster sugar
110g plain flour
2 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp strawberry flavouring
1 tsp lemon flavouring

-Icing
140g butter
300g icing sugar
1 tbsp milk
Yellow colouring gel
Green colouring gel

Spring-themed decorations – I used Mini Eggs, chocolate sprinkles and wafer flowers!

To make my cupcakes, I started by putting some cake cases into cake trays. I used 2 different colour cases (pink and blue) because I would be making one half lemon cakes and the other half strawberry.

In a bowl, I mixed together the butter, sugar, baking powder, flour and eggs until everything had blended nicely and the mixture was smooth.

I divided the mixture in half into 2 bowls. In one bowl I stirred in a teaspoon of strawberry flavouring, the other a teaspoon of lemon flavouring.

I spooned the mixture into the cases, putting the strawberry mixture in the pink cases and the lemon mixture in the blue cases.

I then let the cakes bake in the oven at 160 degrees for 20-25 minutes until the sponge was golden.

To decorate the cupcakes, I made buttercream by mixing the butter, milk and icing sugar together until smooth. I then divided it into 2 bowls.

In the first bowl, I stirred in a few drops of yellow food gel.

I spooned the yellow buttercream on top of the lemon cakes. I then topped them with some chocolate sprinkles and eggs to look like a little nest!

In the second bowl of buttercream, I added a few drops of green food gel and stirred until the frosting turned a nice pastel shade of green.

I spooned the green buttercream onto the strawberry cakes and then carefully dragged the tines of a fork over it to make it look a little scruffy like grass.

Finally, I added a couple of wafer flowers to each cake!

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Whilst Spring is not my favourite season, I do love all of the beautiful flowers and colours that start popping up everywhere you go. It always reminds me of the brighter, warmer days ahead of us!

I hope you’re having a lovely weekend!
Shannon x