Butterfly Cakes

Gluten-, Nut-, Egg- & Dairy-Free Celebration Cakes

Posted by Squires Kitchen

About

There are plenty of recipe books featuring cupcakes but I’ve chosen to champion the humble butterfly cake. When I made these for a vegan and gluten-free stall at a food festival, they were a huge hit – many people with special diets told me they hadn’t been able to eat one since their childhood. Finish the cakes as close to serving as possible to prevent the ‘wings’ from drying out.

If using the gluten-free vanilla sponge (http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/projects/vegan-egg-and-dairy-free-vanilla-sponge-cake), this recipe should make 18 cupcakes or about 80 mini cupcakes. Make sure to fill the cupcake cases only ¾ full. If using the vegan vanilla sponge, this recipe makes 27 cupcakes and about 100 mini cupcakes.

Dairy-Free Buttercream
Ingredients
200g (7oz) dairy-free margarine
800g (1lb 12oz) icing sugar

1 Mix the icing sugar and any flavouring into the dairy-free margarine. Do not over-beat the mixture as it can split.
2 Stir in a few drops of water until it reaches the required consistency.

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You Will Need (8 things)

  • Large nylon Piping Bag fitted with a large star-shaped nozzle
  • Icing Sugar in a shaker
  • Dotty Cupcake Cases and mini cupcake cases: blue, pink (SK)
  • Crystallised Rose fragments
  • Crystallised Violets
  • Buttercream or dairy-free buttercream
  • Paste Food Coloring : pink
  • One quantity gluten-free or vegan vanilla Sponge

Steps (5 steps, 40 minutes)

  1. 1

    Bake the cupcakes in the pink and blue dotty cases. When baked, cut the top off each cupcake and cut each top in half.

  2. 2

    Colour half of the buttercream pink.

  3. 3

    Using the nylon piping bag fitted with a star-shaped nozzle, pipe a swirl of buttercream on top of each cupcake. Use pink buttercream for the cupcakes in blue cases and cream for the cupcakes in pink cases. Stick the rounded side of two ‘wings’ into the buttercream on each cupcake.

  4. 4

    Pipe a small swirl of buttercream in the centre of each pair of wings. Dust with icing sugar.

  5. 5

    Place a crystallised violet on top of the pink swirl of buttercream and crystallised rose fragments on top of the plain-coloured buttercream. Alternatively, you can crystallise your own edible flowers, as shown later in the book.