Gloverly Cupcakes

I made an Easter cake again this year for a charity raffle at work. Unfortunately I was ill the week before so didn’t have as much time as last year and had to choose a simpler design. Sometimes simple is best but I think I still prefer the cake I made last year. The cake this year was being raffled on Wednesday so I made a Simnel cake from the BBC website that would last until the Easter weekend. The chicks were made from egg shaped sugar paste in various colours. The large ones had white dots of icing stuck to them – I cut them out using a plain piping nozzle. The beaks etc were also made out of coloured sugar paste and stuck on with a tiny bit of water. The time consuming part of the decoration was the flower border around the base of the cake. The bluebells were made with blue sugar paste and I used a small blossom plunge cutter to make most of the flowers, with a few small balls for the buds at the top. The daffodils were made using a large and medium blossom cutter. I used the large cutter for the outer petals and elongated the petals using a small ball tool. To make the middle I used the medium blossom cutter and stuck it to the middle of the outer petal. I then placed the small ball tool in the middle and used a tiny palette knife to bring the petals up around to create a cup shape. The grass and stalks for the flowers were made out of green sugar paste cut into long thin triangles. Finally the top was made out of ground almonds and demerara sugar. I would have used crushed biscuits but I didn’t have any so I had to improvise!