SRC: Cadbury Creme Egg Mini Cupcakes

Because I'm a horrible planner, I took this Secret Recipe Club assignment from Our Eating Habits as a way to get ahead of the game and create an Easter treat.  I mean let's face it.  When I post themed recipes AFTER the holiday has already occurred, it doesn't really help you out much now does it?

At first, I was going to take the healthy(er) way out by making these Carrot Muffins but then I saw the most adorably festive Easter decoration technique in my What's Cooking Blogger's Choice swap on Friday so was swayed to making the Cadbury Creme Egg Cupcakes on Jamie's blog instead.  Because I didn't want tons of cupcakes around and all the candy makes these cupcakes super sweet, I adapted the original recipe to be mini-sized cupcakes instead.

Hope you consider adding these to your festive Easter spread and checkout the rest of the Secret Recipe Club member's reveals in the blog hop below!   As usual, thank you to April of the blog Angel's Homestead SRC leader and Debbi of the blog Debbi Does Dinner, our Group C Hostess!

Cadbury Creme Egg Mini Cupcakes

Ingredients

For the Cupcakes

• 5 Tablespoons butter 
• 1/2 cup + 2 Tablespoons sugar 
• 2 eggs 
• 1/8 teaspoon almond extract 
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 
• 3/4 cups all-purpose flour 
• 3/8 cup unsweetened cocoa powder 
• 1 teaspoons baking powder 
• 1/8 teaspoon salt 
• 3/8 cup milk 
• 24 Cadbury Creme Mini Eggs

For the Buttercream Frosting

• 1 sticks of butter 
• 1.5 cups powdered sugar 
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla 
• Pinch of salt
• Green food coloring

For the Decoration

• 24 Mini egg-shaped candies such as Whoppers or Cadbury Chocolate Eggs

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Line 24 mini-cupcake wells with paper cupcake liners.
2. To make cupcake batter cream together the butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time, add both extracts with last egg. Blend in all your dry ingredients, then milk. 
3. Divide batter into prepared mini-muffin tins. Top each cupcake with frozen creme egg, pushing it in so that half of the egg is inside the batter. 
4. Bake for 10-12 minutes at 350F.  Cool.
5. Meanwhile, make the buttercream by creaming together the butter and powdered sugar.  Add vanilla, salt, and food coloring to get desired tint.
6. Fit a piping bag with a multi-opening decorating tip (I use Wilton #233) and then fill with green frosting.  Decorate the top of each cupcake with "grass" by holding the piping bag at 90 degrees about 1/8" above the surface of the cupcake.  Apply gentle pressure while lifting up about 1/4".  Stop pressure and pull tip away.  Repeat until entire surface is covered.  Finish by placing 3 mini egg candies on top of each cupcake.

Source: Modified from Our Eating Habits with frosting and decoration inspiration from Sweet Beginnings

This recipe received the March Group C SRC Editor's Choice Award!