Easter Nest Cupcakes

Kids love to make and eat Easter Nest Cupcakes. Make this teatime treat for the Easter holidays, using your favourite chocolate mini eggs.

Easter Nest Cupcakes

Chocolate butter icing

The recipe for the chocolate butter icing has a high proportion of cocoa, which takes the edge off the sweetness. If you prefer sweeter icing, put less cocoa in and add a little more icing sugar. Don't use drinking chocolate because it doesn't have much cocoa in - the rest is sugar and milk powder.

Chocolate Mini Eggs

I had a lot of fun buying mini eggs for my baking this Easter. In all, I bought four or five different sorts. The eggs I used for the Easter Nest Cupcake were Cadbury's Mini Eggs and Galaxy Golden Eggs. Others you could use are Smartie Mini Eggs and Milky Bar Mini Eggs. They're all unwrapped so they're easy to use straight from the packet. You just have to decide whether you're going for the luxe effect with gold, the subtle effect with Cadbury or the loud and bright version with Smarties.

Helpful Tools

• Wilton icing pipe set - Piping isn't my strongest thing, but I have a lot of icing tubes/tips/pipes/nozzles for different sized cakes and different sorts of icing. I realised that one problem was that they were all too big or too small for the buttercream on fairy cakes and cupcakes. For these, you need three basic nozzles: a plain one (2A), an open star (1M) and a closed star or flower (2D). This set contains all three.

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Easter Nest Cupcakes

Easter Nest Cupcakes are a teatime treat for the Easter holidays using your favourite chocolate mini eggs. Easy for kids to make or help decorate,

Prep Time25 mins

Cook Time20 mins

Total Time45 mins

Course: Teatime

Cuisine: British

Servings: 12 cupcakes

Author: [email protected] Cooks

Ingredients

For the cupcakes:

• 125 g butter
• 125 g caster sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (5ml)
• 150 g self-raising flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder (5ml)

For the chocolate buttercream:

• 150 g butter
• 250 g icing sugar
• 25 g cocoa powder
• 1 tablespoon milk (15ml)

To decorate:

• Mini Eggs

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Equipment

12-hole cupcake/muffin tin

Cupcake/muffin cases

Instructions

Preparation:

• Preheat the oven to 190°C/170°C fan, gas mark 5/375°F
• Line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper cupcake or muffin cases.

For the cakes:

• Put the cake ingredients into the bowl of a free-standing electric mixer (or you can use a handheld electric whisk and mixing bowl) and beat until light and creamy (1-2 minutes).

  (Butter, caster sugar, eggs, vanilla extract, flour, baking powder)
• Alternatively, blitz all the cake ingredients in a food processor for 30 seconds, scrape down and blitz for a further 5 seconds
• Divide the mixture evenly between the paper cases.
• Bake in the preheated oven for 15–20 minutes or until well risen and the top of the cake bounces back when lightly pressed with your finger
• Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes
• Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

For the chocolate buttercream:

• Beat the butter until soft and creamy
• Sift the icing sugar and cocoa powder, and add to the butter in two additions, mixing on a low speed, incorporating the milk, and beat for 3–5 minutes on a higher speed
• Spoon the chocolate buttercream into a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle and pipe it onto the top of the cakes
• Fill each 'nest' with three mini eggs.

Video

Notes

Everyday Cooks Tips:

Quantities - This recipe makes 10-12 cupcakes or 20-24 fairy cakes if you want a smaller cake.