Summer Flower Jam Cakes

I made these summery delights for my Nana'a 80th birthday in August. The decoration is quite time consuming but I really think it is worth it, and they look fab in a little vintage style cake stand!

Ingredients;

Makes 6 large cupcakes

For the cakes:

225g butter

225g caster sugar

225g self raising flour

3 large eggs

1 tablespoon milk

For the filling:

1 teaspoon raspberry jam per cake

For the buttercream:

280g icing sugar

125g unsalted butter

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

2-3 drops yellow food colouring

Decorations:

Coloured silver balls

White ready-to-roll fondant icing

Icing sugar for dusting

Yellow writing icing

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 or 150 degrees centigrade

Line a large 6 hole muffin tin with decorative cases

Cream together the softened butter, sugar and vanilla extract until pale, creamy and fluffy.

Beat in the eggs, one at a time with the electric beaters, then the milk until fully combined.

Sieve in the flour, making sure you get lots of air into it, and gently fold in until just combined. Make sure there are no visible lumps of flour in your mix.

Divide the mixture up into your cases. These are big cakes and need to dome up to achieve the look in the pictures, so make sure you use all of the mixture.

The cakes will take 25-35 mins to cook through, but make sure you check them about 20 mins in to make sure the ones at the back aren't burning.

Allow to cool in the tin for 15 mins then take out to completely cool on a wire rack.

While they are cooling, make the buttercream and decorative flowers;

For the flowers, roll out your fondant icing on a surface dusted with icing sugar so it does not stick. You need to roll this out to about 3mm thick. To achieve the look I created you need to cut out 3 large daisies and 4 mini daisies per cupcake, so 18 large and 24 mini in total.

Once cut out, make a small dimple in the centre of each flower with a chopstick or end of a paintbrush, being careful not to pierce the flower.

Leave to one side to harden.

In a bowl, beat together the softened butter and icing sugar, along with the yellow food colouring to create a lovely smooth, pale lemon coloured frosting.

Once your cakes have cooled it is time to fill and ice them.

Using an apple corer, gauge out the centre of each cake, about 2.5cm deep. Fill the little hole with the raspberry jam.

Use the piece of cake you just removed with the corer to plug the hole back up. You may need to break off some of the softer sponge to get it back in.

It is important to recover the hole to avoid the jam mixing with the icing while you are spreading it.

To ice your cakes, spread generously with buttercream and smooth with a palette knife or non serrated edge of a normal knife.

Place 3 large daisies on your cakes as shown in the image at the bottom of the post. Place 1 small daisy in the centre and put the remaining minis in between the larger ones. Using the yellow writing icing, squeeze a small blob into the centre of each flower, where you made the dimples earlier.

Dot your coloured silver balls in between the flowers, making sure you get a random assortment of colours per cake.

And they are finished! Perfect for an English Summer Tea Party!