Easter Cupcakes – The Foodscape

A very very Happy Easter to all my readers! May the risen Lord bless you with abundant joy and peace! 🙂

While the world rejoices and celebrates this Easter, I thought I’d make a little something to mark this joyous occasion. We don’t normally do anything special on Easter because in my part of the world Sundays aren’t weekends. Back when I was in college, I spent quite a few Easter weekends with friends and family, creating some crazy memories! However, this year was comparatively quiet. Nevertheless, I baked some pretty sweet beauties for family, friends and my loved ones! Here’s a look at the Dark Chocolate Easter Cupcakes – my first ever attempt at baking Easter themed goodies! (And I must say I’m pretty proud of myself 😛 )

Here’s what you need:

For the Cupcakes

Sugar – 1 and 3/4 cups
All Purpose Flour – 1 and 3/4 cups
Baking Powder – 1 and 1/2 tsp
Baking Soda – 1 and 1/2 tsp
Cocoa Powder – 3/4 cup
Salt – 1 tsp
Eggs – 2, beaten
Milk – 1 cup
Vegetable Oil – 1/2 cup
Vanilla Essence – 2 and 1/2 tsp
Boiling Water – 1 cup

For the Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

Unsalted Butter – 120 g
Icing Sugar – 140 g, sifted
Vanilla Essence – 1 tsp
Gel Food colouring in Leaf Green – keep adding a few drops at a time until you get the shade you desire
Cadbury Mini Eggs for garnish

Here’s how you make them:

Preheat your oven to 170 degrees Celsius.
In a bowl blend together sugar, flour, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa powder, eggs, milk and vegetable oil until well incorporated. Add the vanilla essence and boiling water and mix well.
Pour 1/4 cup of batter into each of the cupcake liners and pop into the oven for about 16 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
Take out of the oven and leave to cool.
In another bowl beat the unsalted butter and icing sugar until soft and creamy. Add the vanilla essence and give it a final mix. Pour in a few drops of food colouring and mix well until you get the desired shade of green.
Pipe the Vanilla Buttercream Frosting onto the cupcakes in soft starry peaks with a star tip, to create the look of a nest. Finish off the cupcakes by placing a few Cadbury Mini Eggs on top.

As you can see, these cupcakes are very pleasing to the eye. When I was done frosting and placing the mini eggs on the first cupcake of the lot, I ran to my mum with the cupcake in hand and did a weird victory dance while my face lit up like that of a kid’s in a candy store! I was beyond ecstatic to see how cute the cupcakes turned out.

These cupcakes earned rave reviews from the little ones. There were a lot of “Woww! These are so cute!,” “Look there are small eggs on the cupcakes!” “These cupcakes are very yummy!” These comments from all the cute little ones really warmed my heart. The boyfriend too went all gaga over these cupcakes. And me, well I just can’t stop admiring them! 🙂