52 weeks of baking, Week 8: The Easter Basket Cupcake

As usual with decorating challenges, this was really a challenge. That said, after seeing the kit-kat basket cake posted, I decided that I needed to make an easter basket cake. We already had jellybeans on hand, and I thought I'd grab something to use as basket weave. Twizzlers taste nasty in my opinion, but when I found the filled twizzlers at the store the other day, I decided to give them a shot. In the end, it turned out very cute, but when you consider the fact that I spent 45 minutes on icing, decorating, etc., that's a lot of time for a single cupcake. I likely won't do it again.

As much LOTR as I've been watching lately, this really is 'one cupcake to rule them all'.

Since it's just me for the weekend and I had no desire to decorate an insane number of cupcakes right now, I ended up using this recipe - which made seven small cupcakes, of which I crumb coated three (after peeling off the paper) and used just one. Incidentally, I haven't tasted the cupcakes yet, but they seemed a little dense to be white cupcakes, and I probably won't use that recipe again. I'd pulled out my copy of Ratio earlier before googling, and I'll likely just make a white sponge in the future if I need a small batch.

Cupcakes and supplies. It really was a quick and dirty job, despite the time involved.

To decorate, I made a half batch of the icing I used in this post and crumb coated, with a generous amount on top. I split the filled Twizzlers down the middle, and let the filling aid in gluing the basket weave portion onto the cupcake. I carved out a little hole on either side of the cupcake and filled it with icing, and used that to glue in the red Twizzler handle. Jelly Belly jellybeans topped the whole thing off.

Mid-decoration. Bifurcating filled Twizzlers isn't as simple as it sounds. Those things are gummy.

Total prep/cook time: 2 hours
Happiness rating: Meh. Too pretty to eat.