Lavender and Blossom Honey Cupcakes (mini size)

These are different. Really very different.

I had been combing the net, looking for a "different" cupcake or muffin recipe last week to make cakes for taking into work on the Saturday.

Our wood burning stove Shop gets really busy on a Saturday at this time of year, and I like to be able to offer customers a homemade cake and coffee whilst they wait or have a browse...

I found a recipe HERE for Lily Vanilli's Lavender and Honey Cupcakes.

All I can say is WOW. You might remember the taste from when you were a child of Parma Violets. Well - it's a floral kind of taste like that and almost astringent too.

Instead of normal cupcakes, I made mini ones using an extra deep silicone mini muffin mould. This mould is generally for commercial and semi commercial bakeries - but works amazingly well cut into 2 trays of twenty cells each in a conventional oven. Unlike normal mini muffin tins, this is a little deeper and has straighter sides. When making muffins, you fill the mix to the top of the paper cake case. The muffins rise with a lovely domed top. Mini cupcakes worked in a similar way - only the batter acted differently, so I got a sort of spread crown at the top.

You really do know that the lavender is there. You infuse milk with the lavender and this is then added to the batter and to the frosting. The batter made 40 mini cupcakes. You needed to eat one and then have a second to really decide if you liked it or not ! It was most unusual, but really fragrant, flowery and girly. These had frosting overload - but the frosting was glorious. I must admit, I made the frosting up as I went along and didn't actually use the recipe for that at all. However, I think it would have been very similar.

We've got some really cute mini muffin paper cases in stock now and loads of standard 50mm base size muffin paper cake liners coming in too very soon. The ones photographed are actually specifically for the 40 cell extra deep mini muffin mould as they have a slightly oversize base diameter to suit that mould. We've got those in several patterns although they are not yet online in our website shop.

Sarah-Jane Nash, http://www.siliconemoulds.com/ - the biggest online silicone bakeware cook shop. Shipping worldwide.

40 cell EXTRA DEEP Mini Muffin Mould

We've been waiting so long for this ! I'm now pleased to announce the lauch of our 40 cup EXTRA DEEP silicone mini muffin mould. Originally, we had this made for use in semi commercial and commercial bakeries - but I'm also using one cut in half in my domestic cooker in my kitchen at home. That gives me two large extra large mini muffin trays which are each 450mm wide and 300mm deep and lets me bake extra deep mini muffins that LOOK just like those high rise ones you see in the stores.

Tim in Merv's Hot Bread Kitchen (Attleborough / Norfolk) has been trialing these for us for the past few weeks. I snapped these photos in his bakery yesterday afternoon. He uses our normal paper mini muffin cases in the moulds and fills the paper cases right to the top and then piles on the topping as you can see in the photos below.

The cherry muffins with the big sugar nibs are to die for :-) I'm not surprised they've instantly become very popular ! Now I've managed to get a load of sugar nibs myself - I'm dying to have a play at home.

Hanna from BB's Muffins in Nowich has been using them too. Unlike Tim, Hanna just greases hers to make sure they always release easily and doesn't bother with paper liners. For the finished mini muffins, Hanna adorns them with an icing glaze and sprinkles.

These are now available from http://www.siliconemoulds.com/ at £19.99 each. There are discounted prices available on this item for bulk purchasers - see here

Cupcake Bouquets.......

If you have a search on Google - you'll find loads of stunning examples of cupcake bouquets. I'd never heard or seen such a thing until I bought the Marks and Spencer's Cupcakes book last week.

As soon as I saw it, I was DESPERATE to give it a go. Theirs used an uniced recipe with pieces of candied peel on top to make the cupcakes look like flowers.... but I decided I was going to ice mine and make sugarpaste flowers to go on top.The book said you needed a 6" / 150mm dia polystyrene ball and that it required 24 mini cupcakes to cover it.

I couldn't get big enough polystyrene balls - so I went to the florists suppliers and bought a 6" / 150mm and an 8" / 200mm oasis ball. I figured the smaller ball would be good for a first attempt and I'd have a go with the larger ball at a later date. At the same time, I also bought a vase that would suit either of the two balls.

I've never used sugarpaste for anything before - so it was quite a new experience. I bought it white and pre-made, but coloured batches of it myself so I could use several colours.

I printed a template for cards off from an online site, cut it out of paper and stuck it on to some cardboard. I used that on top of the sugarpaste to make sure all my flowers were the same size. This was a time consuming process for a total novice and after doing the amount I required plus a few spares, I was glad to get on to making the cupcakes.

I chose to make little carrot cakes with cream cheese frosting. I've posted the recipe before - it works very well for muffins or for cupcakes. One batch of mix makes 12 muffins - or 48 minis plus 3 standard size. Given I didn't need that lot - I took all the extras into work on Saturday whilst they were still slightly warm. Our 24 cell silicone mini muffin / cupcake moulds are ideal for this - though I use mini muffin paper cases in them for hygiene when handling - especially with iced cakes.

In the evening, I iced the remaining cupcakes and put the little flowers on the top. Whilst the cream cheese frosting was hardening off in the fridge, I decided to prepare the ball with the toothpicks required to hold the cakes on.

First, I wrapped it in loads of clingfilm as oasis has a tendancy to crumble - and I didnt want it getting in the cakes ! I then used empty cupcake liners to pin on the mould to check the layout.

It was soon VERY obvious that there was some kind of error in the book. No way were 24 mini cupcakes going to go anywhere close to covering the ball ! Instead, it took 46 !!!!!

That delayed my project completion until today, as I had to make another batch of mini cupcakes. As I had no carrots left, I decided I'd use the Martha Swift one bowl chocolate cake recipe. Oliver (my toddler) had decided he'd help me in the kitchen whilst I was making this and decided to change the washing machine settings to put the delicates on to boil wash !

By the time I'd calmed things down and sorted the washing - I remembered I'd forgotten to put the sugar in the mix just as I was putting the cupcakes in the oven. ARRRRRGGHHHHH

Cupcake batch 3 became banana - as there were no carrots left and not enough cocoa :rolls eyes:

Anyway - eventually, I got all the cupcakes baked and iced. It became immediately obvious that one toothpick is not enough to hold these properly in position - so I had to double up on the bottom 3 rows of cupcakes.

Overall - I was highly delighted with the end result and will definately be making these again :-) However, not before buying a flower shaped sugar paste cutter !!