Chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream and candied pansies

Purple perfection.

Mmmmm cupcakes. 

These would have been an ordinary batch of cupcakes except that I stole 13 pansies from next door and proceeded to candy them. 

This process is fairly straightforward. You mix egg whites with icing sugar and paint it on. You're supposed to leave them to dry overnight but I am far too impatient for that and put them on the cupcakes as soon as they were iced. 

Pansies drying in the sun. The excess sugar is eventually absorbed into the flowers. 

They didn't taste like much that day, but the next day they were quite crisp and sugary. They're really more of an aesthetic addition to the cupcakes, but there's nothing wrong with that.

Apparently you can keep candied flowers for up to a year in a sealed container. However, these ones didn't last too long. (I usually store cupcakes in a plastic container with the lid slightly open.)

I'm rather excited about my new gel food colourings too. This buttercream was actually quite purple, which the camera didn't quite pick up accurately. 

Pretttty!

Eat me!

Fig and walnut friand slice

Friands as a slice.

My little sister bought me a beautiful cookbook for my birthday. It's a Woman's Weekly baking collection.

I went to a friend's house for dinner on Friday night and insisted on making dessert. I have never made friands before, and I don't own a friand tray or moulds, so I thought a friand slice would be a good place to start. 

The recipe also included orange zest, butter and orange juice.

The recipe was interesting as it used ground walnuts rather than almond meal as its basis. The texture was similar texture to a traditional friand however. 

The figs didn't go into the actual mix, just on the top. I think next time it would be nice to make the slice more "figgy". They could go into the mix or the pieces on top could be thicker.

I am thinking about fig cupcakes now too... maybe with caramel? And a bit of salt? Mmmm. 

Baking in the afternoon.

I haven't really cooked much with figs before. I think I've put them on a pizza but I can't remember. The ones used in this recipe were dried and sliced. 

I think I've discovered a new favourite snack : ) 

Afternoon tea.