Easter Cup Cakes

We had a bake sale in aid of The Heart Yard on Friday at work. The Heart Yard is part of Kids Company which was set up by the wonderful Camila Batmanghelidjh.  As a team from the office, we're going to be doing some gardening at The Heart Yard as part of a bigger campaign (more of which I'll write about at a later date) and we were raising money though this sale to buy the seeds and other bits for the kitchen garden. Any herbs and veg grown will then be used by the kids there during their cooking lessons and eaten by them.


These Easter Cup Cakes were my contribution to the event. I have to say I love any excuse for getting out the mini eggs and fluffy chicks so I needed no persuading to get baking! I made half chocolate and half vanilla cupcakes topped with a vanilla buttercream frosting and of course Cadbury's Mini Eggs.  I find that other miniature eggs just don't cut it for me. I recently got given a 'cupcake corer' so I used this for the plain cupcakes to take out a section of the middle and fill it with strawberry jam.  It's quite a nifty little gadget and definitely makes creating a hole in them a lot quicker and cleaner.


We ended up raising just over £200 which should go a long way to getting the kitchen garden looking good.  


This is also my entry to April's Tea Time Treats whose theme is, of course, Easter, hosted by Kate from What Kate Baked and Karen from Lavender and Lovage. Happy Easter!


The Recipe


280g caster sugar
280g butter
5 eggs
280g self raising flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder


For the frosting:


200g butter
400g icing sugar
1 tspn vanilla extract
dash of milk
red food colouring
strawberry jam if filling the centre of the cakes


1. Preheat oven to 180c.  Line a cupcake tin with cases (this recipe makes around 26 regular cupcakes). 
2. Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Then add the adds and beat again. Finally mix in the flour.  
3. Spoon half the mixture into the cupcake cases.  Mix the cocoa powder in the remaining half of the mixture and then place the remaining mixture in the cases.
4. Bake for around 20 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out clean.
5. To make the frosting beat together the butter, icing sugar, vanilla extract and milk until smooth.  I used half the buttercream to decorate the chocolate cupcakes and then added a tiny bit of red food colouring to create pink icing. I then used this on the plain cupcakes. 
6. Decorate with mini eggs, chicks etc.