I made these cupcakes for Mothering Sunday. They fitted the bill of my mantra – big impact, minimal effort. OK, sometimes I like to go all out and spend hours rolling and piping; but for the most part I’m running late, or fall asleep whilst the cake is cooling and wake up with half an hour to shower and decorate a cake, somehow presentable.
The only thing is with these cakes, is that you need to start at least the night before you want to offer them, so that the butterflies have time to dry out. Otherwise, they will just flop and won’t have the same fluttering effect :). Other than that, these pretty cakes are easy as pie. In fact, they’re easier than pie.
For the cupcakes, I used a basic recipe from VeganYumYum which gave nice golden, almondy cupcakes. I then simply rolled out some ready made white fondant icing about 1/2 cm thick and cut out little butterflies with a cookie cutter. I placed them on a grill rack, in between the slats. I left them overnight to dry.
The next morning, I made up a little icing with some natural lilac paste colouring.
I cut domes off of the cake to create a flattened surface.
I used glitter icing pens to decorate the dried butterflies with dots and stripes. I doused the cakes with icing sugar, then placed a teaspoon of the lilac icing on top before positioning a butterfly in the icing, and left to set.
I used roughly 200g fondant icing for 12 butterflies. I used 100g icing sugar mixed with 2tsp water and gradually added dabs of colour.
The chickies helped too! (From back to front; Layla, Trixie and Lynxie).
