Another post not about sewing! It was a tradition when I was growing up for my Mum to make hot cross buns on Good Friday, they were delicious and thankfully I can’t imagine that she would ever have considered buying them. I have also made them for the last 5 years or so, they are quite different to the soft shop bought ones – much nicer in my opinion with more of a home made bread like consistency (yep I also make most of the bread that is eaten in this house!).
However last year I came across a recipe for Simnel Cupcakes that sounded nice and I had marzipan left from the Christmas cake so whipped up a batch and they were quite delicious. So this year I’m opting to not make hot cross buns as they are a bit of an effort and I’m not sure the girls like them. This morning, knowing that we were having friends round to play this afternoon I made a batch of cupcakes – with marzipan left from Christmas (it’s alright it does have quite a long shelf life).
Fresh from the oven, before I let the girls loose with the icing:
Iced and ready for eating:
If you fancy having a go, they are relatively quick and easy to make (certainly in comparison to hot cross buns!)
Oven 190 or 170 fan, gas mark 5
115g butter, 400g plain flour, 115g caster sugar, 1 tablespoon baking powder, 150g marzipan, 1 egg, 200ml milk
For the icing – 115g icing sugar and water, mini chocolate eggs or other decorations as desired
Mix flour, baking powder and sugar in a large bowl. Melt the butter. Finely chop marzipan, put half of this in with flour mix (reserving rest for topping). Combine melted butter with egg and milk, pour into flour mix and stir gently.
Spoon the mixture into greased cupcake tins or cases (I’ve just started using silicon ones from Habitat and they are fantastic and reusable!) sprinkle with remaining marizpan.
Bake for 15-20 minutes. Once cool, mix the icing sugar with enough water to make a thick smooth mixture, decorate cakes.
These quantities made 24 cakes using the silicon cases which are slightly larger than cupcake cases but not as big as muffin cases.
Enjoy
