Rabbit cupcakes recipe

Serve these cute little Easter rabbit cakes to the kids on Easter Sunday and see their faces light up, better still, get them involved in making them. They make ideal gifts for all your family and friends or for the children’s teachers too, just wrap them in cellophane bags or individual cupcake boxes. We have made the cake with a vanilla cupcake base but if liked you can make them chocolate flavour by substituting one tablespoonful of flour for one tablespoonful of cocoa powder. Why not make some chick or pink pig faces too, or a family of cupcakes!

Ingredients

For this Easter recipe

you will need:

• 150g butter, at room temperature
• 150g caster sugar
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 150g self-raising flour
• 1/2tsp baking powder
• 1tsp vanilla extract

For the buttercream icing:

• 100g butter
• 400g icing sugar
• 250g ready-to-roll sugar paste
• Blue, brown and pink gel food or paste colourings
• A few red Smarties

Method

1. Heat the oven to 180°C/160°C Fan/Gas Mark 4. Line a cupcake tin with 12 paper cupcake cases.
2. Place the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl and beat with a wooden spoon or electric mixer until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the eggs a little at a time until smooth, adding a little flour if the mixture curdles.
   Stir in the flour, baking powder and vanilla extract until smooth.
3. Place a heaped dessert spoonful of mixture in each cupcake case and bake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown and just firm to the touch. Leave to cool on a wire rack.
4. To make the butter cream place the butter in a bowl with 1-2 tsp boiling water, add the icing sugar and beat until really smooth and paler in colour. Place in a piping bag with a large plain nozzle and pipe a large swirl on top of the cakes. Top with a second smaller swirl.
5. To make the bunny faces, roll out a little white sugar paste and shape into long ears. Leave to dry on kitchen paper. Knead a little pink food colouring into 25g of sugar paste and use to make pink ears, dampen the back with a damp paintbrush and place on top of the white ears, using the end of a small paint brush to make an indentation in each ear. Leave to dry.
   
6. Colour a tiny piece of sugar paste brown and set aside covered in cling film. Colour the remaining sugar paste with blue colouring then roll out on a work top lightly dusted with sugar paste. Using a small round biscuit cutter cut out small circles for the bunny faces and set aside on baking parchment to dry.
   
7. Use the brown sugar paste to make eyes and whiskers and add the Smartie noses. Attach the ears using a little water to dampen each piece. Place the bunny faces on top of the butter cream and add a pink sugar paste bow.