Lincoln's Lemon Cupcakes!
It's my cats birthday, so naturally, I created a cupcake in his honour. What? Don't you guys do that for you cats? Just me? Strange....
The cupcake is made out of 4 main parts, the biscuit ears and whiskers, royal icing, the cupcake itself, and the buttercream frosting. I admit, it's a little bit of a marathon, but the components are very basic and easy to make in themselves, there's just a few extra steps. Also, yes, these are for human consumption - not for cats.
Royal Icing
Royal Icing is an icing which is characterised by how it hardens and shines once set. You may have seen it before on gingerbread houses, or elegantly designed sugar cookies. The best this about Royal Icing is that you can change the consistency to suit your needs. It can easily be adapted for outlining or flooding, by changing the amount of water you mix in. For this recipe, it needs to be a slightly runny consistency, so the whiskers and ears can be dipped. If you don't want to use royal icing for this no worries! You could instead use black food colouring in the biscuit dough.
I N G R E D I E N T S
Biscuit (for the ears/whiskers)
70 grams butter
1/4 cup caster sugar
1 Tbsp of milk
1 cup of plain gluten free flour
1/4 tsp of baking powder
1/4 tsp xanthan gum
Royal Icing
1 1/2 cup of icing sugar
1 egg white (or egg white powder)
1/2 tsp lemon juice
2-3 drops black food colour
2 tbsp of water (to make the icing runny)
Cupcake
150 grams softened Butter
2/3 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 and 1/4 cup of GF Self Raising Flour
1/2 lemon
Icing
75 grams of softened butter
150 grams of icing sugars
1/2 lemon
Pink sweets for the nose (I used chopped up foam lobsters)
M E T H O D
Bake the biscuit: Beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
Add the milk and beat again.
Sift the flour, baking powder, and xanthan gum and mix again with a wooden spoon until you can form a ball of cookie dough.
Dust a surface with flour, and roll out dough until about 0.5cm thick.
Cut half the dough into small triangles, about 2cms in length. The cut the other half into thin strips for the whiskers about 2cm in length and 0.5cm in width.
Place on a lined baking tray, and bake at 160° celsius for 4 minutes, or until golden around the edges. You may need to do this in 2 lots because the whiskers will cook quicker than the ears. Once cooked, let the cookies cool completely.
Make the Royal Icing: lightly whisk the egg white in a large bowl and then add the icing sugar, juice of half a lemon and mix until combined.
Slowly add in the water until you have a smooth and runny consistency.
Stir in the black food colouring.
Dip the whiskers and ears into the icing, and set them aside to harden while you make the cupcakes.
Make the lemon cupcakes: Turn the oven to 170 Celsius and grease a muffin tray.
Beat the butter and sugar together until fluffy.
Add egg and beat again until combine.
Sift in the flour and mix with wooden spoon.
Fold in the juice and zest of half of lemon.
Spoon mixture into the muffin tray, evenly spread across the 8/9 moulds.
Cook for 20 minutes and then remove from oven. Transfer to cooling rack and wait until they have thoroughly cooled before icing.
Make the buttercream frosting and assemble the cupcake: Beat the softened butter, icing sugar, and juice of half a lemon for about 5 minutes until light, smooth and fluffy.
Transfer buttercream to a piping bag, and pipe frosting in a cone on top of the cooled cupcakes.
Stick the ears, nose and whiskers into the frosting
