Twist the icing bag and grip between your thumb and index finger. Place the other hand at the bottom of the bag and use this to guide the tip. Starting in the middle of the cake let the icing fall onto the cake. Then pipe over this icing in a spiral action, over piping what you already piped by about a millimetre or two. When you reach the end of your swirl and you have covered the cake release and gently pull. Sometimes the join is quite neat, however if it isn’t you can use a sugar flower or leaf to cover it.

PREP: 40 MINS COOK: 22 MINS Plus cooling MORE EFFORT MAKES 12

Ingredients

• 225g self-raising flour
• 175g golden caster sugar
• zest 2 lemons
• 1 tbsp poppy seeds, toasted
• 3 eggs
• 100g natural yogurt
• 175g butter, melted and cooled a little

For the icing

• 225g butter, softened
• 400g icing sugar, sifted
• juice 1 lemon
• few drops yellow food colouring
• icing flowers or yellow sprinkles, to decorate

Method

1. Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4 and line a 12-hole muffin tin with cupcake or muffin cases. Mix the flour, sugar, lemon zest and poppy seeds together in a large mixing bowl. Beat the eggs into the yogurt, then tip this into the dry ingredients with the melted butter. Mix together with a wooden spoon or whisk until lump-free, then divide between the cases. Bake for 20-22 mins until a skewer poked in comes out clean – the cakes will be quite pale on top still. Cool for 5 mins in the tin, then carefully lift onto a wire rack to finish cooling.
2. To ice, beat the softened butter until really soft in a large bowl, then gradually beat in the icing sugar and lemon juice. Stir in enough food colouring for a pale lemon colour, then spoon the icing into a piping bag with a large star nozzle.
3. Ice one cake at a time, holding the piping bag almost upright with the nozzle about 1cm from the surface of the cake. Pipe one spiral of icing around the edge, then pause to break the flow before moving the nozzle towards the centre slightly and piping a second, smaller spiral that continues until there are no gaps in the centre. Slightly ‘dot’ the nozzle into the icing as you stop squeezing to finish neatly. Repeat to cover all the cakes, then top with sugar decorations or scatter with sprinkles.

hello welcome to my blog my name is Lilli-rose and I love making cakes. I’ve been making cakes on my own for since i was 10 now I’m 15 but I have been cooking since I was 3. In this blog I’m going to share my lemon gaint cupcake with you.

Makes: 1 Skill: Medium Cost: Cheap Prep: 40 Min Cooking: 1 Hr

Ingredients

• Ingredients For The Giant Cupcake
• 330g self raising flour, sifted
• 40g of cornflour
• 330g golden caster sugar
• 330g of unsalted butter softened
• 1 ½ tsps of baking powder
• 6 large eggs
• 6 tbsps of milk
• Zest and juice of two large lemons

• Ingredients For The Buttercream
• 500g of icing sugar
• 120g of unsalted butter
• 2 tsps of lemon zest
• 3-4 tbsps of fresh lemon juice
• 3 tbsp lemon curd (to sandwich cakes together)

• Ingredients For The Shell And Decorations
• 397g yellow candy melts or 400g good quality chocolate
• 20g of chocolate fondant
• 70g of white flower paste – I coloured 50g yellow using sugarflairs egg yellow and coloured 20g holly green by sugarflair

Equipment:

Giant Cupcake tin or mould, Wilton cake release to grease the tin, Wilton 1B decorating tip, Piping bag – I use disposable bags

Method

• 1/4 fill a pan with water and place a heatproof bowl over the top. Don’t let the bowl touch the water otherwise the melts will burn. Empty the candy melts into the glass bowl and heat gently until the candy has melted and it’s smooth and shiny. Remove from the heat and using a silicone brush, put the melted chocolate around the inside of the bottom and sides of the giant cupcake mould making it as even as possible so as to create a shell for the bottom of the cake. Place in the fridge to harden for 30 minutes or until set, then remove from the tin and grease the tin for the cake.

• Preheat the oven to 170°C/325°F/Gas Mark 3.

• In a large bowl cream the butter and sugar until light in colour and fluffy.

• Sift the flours and the baking powder together and add 1/3 to the butter and sugar with 2 eggs. Beat until just combined then repeat until all the flour and eggs have been added. Add the milk and the zest and juice of the lemons and beat again.

• Fill the tin/mould to 2/3 full and place in the oven to bake for between 50 mins and 1 hour depending on your own oven. The cake will be done when it is springy to the touch. Do not remove the cake from the oven until it’s done.

• Meanwhile make your sunflowers by colouring your flower paste green and yellow and popping a tiny amount of brown in the centre of the mould and then adding the yellow for the petals. Pop them out and leave to dry on a piece of greaseproof paper or drying sponge. I used a calyx cutter and the green flower paste for the back leaves of the sunflower. Then cut 12 leaves from the green flower paste, leave them to dry on the drying sponge.

• Make the buttercream by adding all the ingredients together and beating for about 5 mins, cover with a damp cloth until you are ready to use it.

• When the cake is cool trim the base of the cake slightly so it fits into the candy shell. I just trim off all the grooves on the base. Slice the base into three and sandwich with lemon curd and buttercream. Pop the base of the cake into the candy shell and top with buttercream.

• Place the top of the cake on top of the base and lightly cover in buttercream. I find that if you have a turn table it’s quicker as you can easily turn and ice at the same time

• Now pipe the remainder of the icing onto the top of the cake by adding a Wilton 1B to a large piping bag. Fill the bag with buttercream and twist the bag right at the top of the buttercream, hold the twist between your thumb and forefinger and apply pressure to pipe roses to the top of the cake.

• When you have finished piping add the sunflowers you made earlier and decorate with a ribbon and cake buckle.