Gloverly Cupcakes

Last year I had a minor operation on my left hand just before Easter so I wasn’t able to make and decorate an Easter cake, so this year I had to make up for it by creating something special. I took inspiration from a flower pot cake that I had seen and reused the two bunnies I had kept safe in a box from the Easter cake I made a few years ago. I also tried a new simnel cake recipe that had chocolate in and pistachio marzipan. Click here to see more pics of this colourful cake and try the recipe.

We all love fruit cake in our house, so I was keen to stick to tradition and make a Simnel cake for Easter, but when I saw this recipe which had both pistachio marzipan, orange and chocolate, I couldn’t resist, all my favourite flavours together in a Simnel cake. The recipe can be found here. I made a 4”, 2 x 5” and a 6” cake and used the pistachio marzipan in between each layer when I assembled them. I made extra marzipan so I could use it to cover the cake too before icing it.

Once I had stacked the cake I trimmed it to make a flower pot shape and then covered it with the marzipan, the off cuts were delicious! I then covered the cake with the terracotta coloured fondant and added some texture to make it look like a flower pot. I made the dome for the flowers to go on with some cheap fondant from the supermarket and secured the bunnies in place before covering it with all the flowers I had made in advance. Finally I added the leaves in the gaps and left over flowers onto the cake board that I had covered with grey marbled fondant to look like patio slabs.