Girly Nature Cupcakes

I made these lovely butterfly cupcakes and brought them along to one of my family member's birthday at the beach/park. It was beautiful warm weather,great time for swimming and spending time with family.The cupcakes were a hit and had positive compliments.My family thought, how cute the butterfly tops were and liked the surprise of the added color and taste of the chocolate to the center of the cupcake.

They were deliciously simple and easier then you think to assemble by the look of it. Any recipe that I find in "The Big Book Of Baking" is challenging and simple at the same time. Its my favorite so far in my collection of recipe books and has excellent photography.

These cupcakes have a simple richness of dark chocolate and have a very moist,crumble cake texture.They have a interesting appealing crackle appearance to the top of the cupcake, which brings neat detail to the butterflies.It also looks as though the butterflies are about to take flight off the platform of cupcakes and gives some imagination to any children or adults that may eat them.

With these cupcakes I also added my own creativity into the mix by adding some colored chocolate to the middle of the cakes. To be more specific I added green candy melts that I had also used in Bob the builder cake and the peanut butter thumbnail cookies. They gave some great color, milky chocolate flavor and some more fun to the cupcakes.

When you get to bring your own creativity into a recipe, there is always something awarding in that.So get your creativity going and bring a recipe a new light.

Try it out yourself and enjoy.

What I Did:

• Didn't have semisweet chocolate(melted) so added 2 tbsp more of cocoa and added about 1/2 cup of water.
• Made a vanilla butter cream, eliminated lemon juice and lemon rind.Adding 1 tsp of vanilla.
• Adding 1 green candy melt to batter and placed batter on top.
  
  

Chocolate Surprise Butterfly Cakes
(Adapted From Chocolate Butterfly Cakes, The Big Book Of Baking,Love Food)

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup superfine sugar

1 1/4 cup self rising flour

2 eggs

2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa

1oz/25 g semisweet chocolate,melted

confectioners' sugar, for dusting

Vanilla Butter cream

6 tbsp butter,softened

11/3 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted

1.Preheat the oven to 350F.
2.Place 12 papers liners in muffin pan.

3.Beat  butter, superfine sugar,flour,eggs, and cocoa in a large bowl until smooth.
4.Beat in the melted chocolate

5.Spoon the batter into paper liners.Filling them less then three quarter fill and add a green candy melt to each. Top with more batter till three quarter filled and not visible.
6.Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes,or until springy to the touch. Let cool.

Vanilla Butter cream:
Beat butter in a mixing bowl until light fluffy.Gradually beat in the confectioners' sugar, beating well.

Cut the tops off the cakes using a serrated knife.
Cut each cake top in half.Spread the butter cream over cut surface of each cake and push the two cake pieces on top into the butter cream to form wings.Dust with confectioners' sugar.