Lavender lovelies

I received a special delivery from France last week – some dried organic lavender flowers from Kate’s mum. I had an enjoyable Monday afternoon (while Ivy was asleep and my mum nipped to the shops for us) baking lavender cupcakes. They are another recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook and I got on better with this one, although I think it only makes nine decent cakes rather than the suggested twelve. My mum pointed out of course that perhaps there’s less cake to make room for more icing. Cupcake icing is so mega sweet that I think you can do with less so I made 3/4 of the suggested amount. You can play with this though, but I think Kate would be happier with more cake and less icing. I did leave the lavender to infuse with the milk overnight – I think it’s worth doing it for the maximum time. I seem to keep altering the methods the book suggests – Dan agrees that it’s sometimes a bit odd to whisk up mainly dry ingredients with a hand whisk in an open bowl – obviously it’s going to go everywhere!

They are surprisingly not as overpowering as you might think and have a lovely calming subtle flavour, well that’s my opinion.

Cakes:
120ml whole milk
3 tablespoons lavender flowers
120g plain flour
140g caster sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
40g unsalted butter
1 egg
12 small springs of lavender (or a few flowers for the top)

Frosting:
25ml whole milk
1 tablespoon dried lavender flowers
250g icing sugar
80g unsalted butter
couple of drops of purple/blue food colouring

Put the milk and lavenders flowers for the cake mix in a jug and leave in the fridge over night (or as long as possible – a few hours). Do the same with the milk and flowers for the frosting. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees.
Put flour, sugar, bp and butter in a bowl and rub in the butter until a sandy mixture (don’t whisk it as they suggest – what?!). Strain the lavender infused milk and add slowly to the mix beating well, add the egg, beat well. Spoon the mixture evenly between 12 (9) cupcake cases and bake for about 15-20 minutes or until golden and bounces back once touched. Leave to cool completely before spreading on the icing.

Lavender frosting: Beat together the icing sugar, butter and colouring (I get it started with a wooden spoon or you have a snowy  kitchen again). Strain the milk for the icing and add slowly to the mix beating well. Beat for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy and ready to use.

(The icing’s a bit too turquoise – needs to be more blue, oh well have to experiment more)