Lavender and Blossom Honey Cupcakes (mini size)

These are different. Really very different.

I had been combing the net, looking for a "different" cupcake or muffin recipe last week to make cakes for taking into work on the Saturday.

Our wood burning stove Shop gets really busy on a Saturday at this time of year, and I like to be able to offer customers a homemade cake and coffee whilst they wait or have a browse...

I found a recipe HERE for Lily Vanilli's Lavender and Honey Cupcakes.

All I can say is WOW. You might remember the taste from when you were a child of Parma Violets. Well - it's a floral kind of taste like that and almost astringent too.

Instead of normal cupcakes, I made mini ones using an extra deep silicone mini muffin mould. This mould is generally for commercial and semi commercial bakeries - but works amazingly well cut into 2 trays of twenty cells each in a conventional oven. Unlike normal mini muffin tins, this is a little deeper and has straighter sides. When making muffins, you fill the mix to the top of the paper cake case. The muffins rise with a lovely domed top. Mini cupcakes worked in a similar way - only the batter acted differently, so I got a sort of spread crown at the top.

You really do know that the lavender is there. You infuse milk with the lavender and this is then added to the batter and to the frosting. The batter made 40 mini cupcakes. You needed to eat one and then have a second to really decide if you liked it or not ! It was most unusual, but really fragrant, flowery and girly. These had frosting overload - but the frosting was glorious. I must admit, I made the frosting up as I went along and didn't actually use the recipe for that at all. However, I think it would have been very similar.

We've got some really cute mini muffin paper cases in stock now and loads of standard 50mm base size muffin paper cake liners coming in too very soon. The ones photographed are actually specifically for the 40 cell extra deep mini muffin mould as they have a slightly oversize base diameter to suit that mould. We've got those in several patterns although they are not yet online in our website shop.

Sarah-Jane Nash, http://www.siliconemoulds.com/ - the biggest online silicone bakeware cook shop. Shipping worldwide.