What I baked: Sheep Cupcakes

Two weeks ago, my next door neighbour asked me if I could make sheep cupcakes for their church. I had never thought about sheep as a thing you could have in cupcake form before, but why not? I find it hard to resist a challenge!

Of course my first port of call for something like this is Pinterest. I really had no idea what a sheep cupcake could possibly look like, but looking at the pictures, I was happy to see that there were a lot of options that looked do-able. I enjoy piping buttercream, but I know I wouldn't be able to do it in a wool-like manner, so mini-marshmallows seemed to be the better option.

I didn't take any photographs while I made these so it isn't going to be a tutorial, but I made the eyes first, by making small balls of white fondant icing and even smaller balls of black and sticking them together with a little water. Then I made blobs for black fondant for the sheep faces, squeezing one side a little flatter and then sticking the eyes in, sticking with water again. I made the ears by rolling out a sausage of black fondant icing.

The cupcakes are coffee flavour (following the linked recipe but without the espresso syrup), with white chocolate buttercream, as requested by my neighbour. I spooned the buttercream on to the cake, pressed in a sheep face, then stuck in mini marshmallows in the rest of the buttercream.

 I'm so pleased about how they came out because I'm really not good at making things like this with my fingers - fimo clay is largely wasted on me. But although they look a bit crazy and did take me a long time to do (the sheep faces took about three hours but I was watching Supernatural on TV at the same time!), they were well worth it.

Should I make some too? I'm sure like me you've seen a lot of Pinterest fails, but this definitely qualifies as a Pinterest win. These would be great for a farm theme party or for an Easter or spring lamb theme. Also they tasted pretty good, even if I do say so myself!

Look out for a sheep related crochet pattern coming up on my blog soon...

Lemon Mint Mini Cupcakes

I love baking, especially cakes, and I'm always eager to try new things and new flavours. I was hosting my flute group last week, and, armed with a new mini cupcake tin, I thought it would be nice to have a spring like flavour for our refreshments. So I went with lemon mint.

Naturally the first thing I did was google for ideas. I really liked the idea of infusing butter with mint flavour I saw on Stephen Andrew Jones' lemon mint cupcake recipe. I wanted to use ingredients I had in the house, though, so I decided to modify my current favourite basic cupcake recipe. I added a ton of different flavourings because I wanted the taste to be stronger as I sampled the batter. I'm very lazy and now I have a stand mixer I don't bother folding flour for small cakes, I just try not to mix the flour for long.

Ingredients (makes 12 cupcakes/36 mini cupcakes)

• 50g butter
• 100g margarine
• a few fresh mint leaves
• 150g sugar
• 3 eggs
• 150g self-raising flour, sifted
• 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/2 tablespoon strong spearmint tea (Optional. I used 2 spoons of spearmint to about 100ml of boiling water. You could use peppermint tea or extra drops of peppermint extract.)
• 1/2 tablespoon lemon curd
• a few drops peppermint extract
• a few drops orange flower water
• 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla essence (Optional. I have to put vanilla in all the things. Even if only a tiny bit. Don't judge me.)

Method

Preheat the oven to 175-180deg C, depending on your oven.

In a bowl, chop up the butter and the mint leaves, and put the bowl in a saucepan 1/3 full of water over a medium heat to melt it. Allow to sit for a few minutes (up to 15 - I did less as I was in a hurry) and take off the heat. Strain out the mint leaves and leave to cool (I hurried it up in the fridge).

Cream the butter and sugar in a stand mixer if you have one. Add each egg with a spoonful of flour to prevent curdling. After the third egg add the lemon juice, tea, lemon curd, peppermint extract, orange flower water and vanilla.

Turn the mixer down to low and add the flour. Mix until combined.

Spoon the mixture into cupcake or mini cupcake cases, and bake for 15-20 minutes until golden. Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack.

Icing
I made standard buttercream (150g butter, 300g icing, 2 tablespoons milk) but used single cream instead of milk and added equal amounts of lemon juice and spearmint tea (1/2 tablespoon of each) and equal amounts peppermint extract and orange flower water (a few drops each).

Everyone loved them - my flute group, my church group and some work colleagues. The flavour was strong enough to be distinguishable in the cake instead of coming just from the icing. A recipe I hope to make again.