Not Quite Nigella » » 2008 » March

Each year, you know its approaching Easter once the Valentines Day products disappear and the Easter eggs and chicks come out. For some reason I have a bizarre liking for these tiny little yellow chicks. I even made a miniature nappy with safety pins for one. A year ago, we had put them in our mini cactus garden but I accidentally watered one and once you get water on these little chicks, they are ruined. I knew my Easter cupcakes had to include these chicks, in memorandum of the one I accidentally killed with water. RIP little chickadee. And don’t worry, these ones will live the life of a free range chick in our cactus garden afterwards.

I saw the basket weave decoration in the Womens Weekly cucpakes book but their recipe is for a fruit cake cupcake. Surely something more chocolatey would be more suitable for Easter? So I used a Double chocolate raspberry cake in place of the fruit cake. The main problem was that my royal icing was not as stiff as theirs. Theirs looks quite different to mine in the picture although I followed it word for word, even making two batches of the stuff. Perhaps they used meringue powder or something like that to get their icing rock hard.

Now for the technical bits and picking the recipe apart. Their recipe says to pipe directly onto the cake but when I did, this odd white bloom formed between the cake and the icing the next day after I left it to dry overnight. So luckily I had piped the basket weave onto the cupcake paper for some of them and that seemed fine-although eating the icing off the paper doesn’t make for good eating. Also I wasn’t able to pipe onto the cupcake all at once, I had to do it in two batches - one half and then the other half, as my royal icing was not that firm so I didn’t want them to sit upright as the effects of gravity on setting icing are obvious. So put plenty of time aside for this-2 days to be certain that the icing dries.

I’d also recommend using the a straight edge cupcake paper pan as you will want to pipe upwards and it makes it easier. Of course its up to you but I did use one of the brown paper ones that you can get at stores. It did mean that since they are larger, I got half the amount of cupcakes though so be sure to adjust for numbers. There’s nothing worse than a kid missing out on a cupcake-or an adult for that matter.

Easter Basket cupcakes

Double chocolate raspberry cake

60g dark eating chocolate, chopped coarsely
1/2 cup (125ml) water
90g butter softened
1 cup (220g) firmly packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2/3 cup (100g self raising flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/3 cup (40g) almond meal
100g frozen raspberries

Royal icing

500g pure icing sugar
2 egg whites
1 teaspoon lemon juice
brown food colouring

Decorations

sugared almonds or mini chocolate eggs

1. Preheat oven to moderately slow 170c/150 fan forced. Assemble cupcake liners on tray and double case them (to ensure that they hold their shape, place one liner within another)

2. Combine chocolate and water in small saucepan, stir over a low heat until smooth

3. Beat butter, sugar and eggs in small bowl with electric mixer until just combined

4. Stir in sifted flour and cocoa, almond meal, then warm chocolate mixture, fold in raspberries. Divide mixture among cases, smooth surface.

5. Bake cupcake about 30 minutes if you’re using the larger ones like I did (smaller ones will take 20 minutes or so)

6. Once cakes are cooled pipe royal icing around cakes in two lots using a basket tip (I used a small star tip as my store had sold out of basket weave tips). Pipe one vertical line from the top of the case to the bottom, followed by short horizontal lines across the long vertical line. The horizontal lines should be a tube-width apart. Pipe the next long vertical line at the end of the previous short horizontal lines. Pipe short horizontal lines into the gaps, between the two vertical lines. Repeat previous steps, continuing the basket weave design until the design meets with the starting point. It will take a long time and I let one half set overnight before doing the other half.

7. Fill baskets with sugared almonds or chocolate eggs.

Royal Icing

Sift icing sugar through very fine sieve. Lightly beat egg white in a small bowl with a clean electric mixer; beat in icing sugar a tablespoon at at time. When icing reaches firm peaks, use wooden spoon to beat in juice and colouring. Cover tightly with plastic wrap.