One of the great things about being Eastern Orthodox is that our Easter is often a few weeks after Western Easter. The obvious upshot of this is that I can buy tons of discounted Easter candy and still have it in time for my celebrations. Of course, the downside is that nobody understands why I'm still fasting for lent, or why I invite them over for Easter dinner five weeks late. But, these are tolerable setbacks when huge shopping carts full of chocolate are concerned. For these cupcakes, I used Mini Cadbury Cream Eggs and chocolate eggs I gleaned from my neighborhood Walgreens to make a spring theme. The Cadbury Eggs are baked inside a white cupcake, and the chocolate eggs rest in a nest atop a bed of buttercream "grass." Despite how fancy they look, the decorating is quick and only requires one icing tip.
The Science.
For these cupcakes, I wanted a light, fluffy cake to compliment the chocolate eggs. While my standard yellow cake recipe always turns out and has a moist, fine crumb, it is too dense and buttery for what I wanted here. I played around with reducing the amount of eggs and substituting vegetable oil for the butter, but this ended up making the cake spongey and eggy tasting. So, I decided to alter the recipe to make it a white cake, instead of a yellow cake. I replaced the whole eggs with egg whites, and beat them to stiff peaks before adding them to the batter. This was closer, but the cake was a little stiffer than I would have liked. In the end, I found that beating half the egg whites to peaks and increasing the buttermilk gave the perfectly moist, fluffy texture I was looking for.
The Recipe.Cadbury cupcakes:
6 egg whites, divided
1 1/2 cups sugar, divided
2 1/4 cups cake flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup salted butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/3 cup buttermilk
24 Mini Cadbury Cream Eggs
30-50 chocolate eggs
Preheat oven to 350°F and line two cupcake tins with paper liners. In a medium bowl, beat three egg whites on medium speed until frothy. Gradually beat in 1/2 cup sugar and continue to beat until soft peaks form. Set aside. Sift together flour and baking powder in another bowl. In a large bowl, beat together remaining cup sugar, butter, remaining egg whites, and vanilla. Alternately add one third of the flour mixture and buttermilk, beating between each addition just until combined. Fold in beaten egg whites with a spatula. Fill cupcake tins using 1/4 cup measure, placing an unwrapped Mini Cadbury Cream Egg in the center of each cupcake. Lift and drop pans on countertop 4 times to release bubbles. Bake on center rack for 20 minutes, or until tester comes out clean. Cool on wire rack.
To decorate, make half a batch of buttercream icing, and half a batch of chocolate buttercream. Tint the vanilla buttercream green with gel icing colors. Using a 133 grass tip, pipe grass on the periphery by applying pressure to the
bag and pulling away before releasing. For the nests, pipe the chocolate icing in a circular
motion, beginning in the center and building up the sides of the nest as
you go around. You don't need to wash out the tip between the green and
the chocolate icing, just pipe onto a paper towel until the new color comes out
clean. To finish, place one to three chocolate eggs in each nest.
