Clean Cup! Clean Cup! Moove Do~own!!

Disney Classic # 13 - Alice in Wonderland

My inspiration for the cakes (and drinks) came from the food and drink in the movie. Originally I was going to focus on the Mad Hatter's tea party; I was going to make a teapot shaped tea-flavoured cake, then thought perhaps it would be fun to bake the cakes actually in tea cups/mugs. I toyed with the idea of somehow making edible tea-cups, but I couldn't think of how to do so without spending hours moulding them out of sugar paste (which probably wouldn't taste too great with the tea flavoured cake) so I decided against the tea-party. Another idea that I toyed with for a while was a two flavoured mushroom cake - one side to make you grow taller, and the other side to make you grow shorter. (I will most definitely be creating this one in the future. Maybe one day I will hold an Alice style tea party!?) The idea I finally settled on were the "eat me" biscuits and cakes which make Alice grow bigger, and of course I couldn't serve cakes which make you bigger without serving the drinks to make you small again, so I decided to make some (adult) "drink me" potions too ^_^

The tea flavoured cake is a recipe I sort of invented earlier this year. When sat discussing the joys of tea and cake with my friends, Big Mike raised the question of whether or not I'd ever come across a recipe for tea flavoured cake. I hadn't, but for his birthday I decided that I would do the research and try it, however the only recipes I could find for "tea flavoured cake" used green tea. So I decided to adapt a basic sponge recipe by adding tea to it. For the vodka - I came across this video tutorial when searching for "colourful drinks" so I thought I'd give it a go.

Drink Me Potions (Skittles Vodka)

Prep time: 1-2 days             Cook time: none         Serves: this depends on how much you drink! There was more than enough for 10 of us to have a couple of drinks each

Ingredients:

750ml Vodka
174g (share bag size) skittles

1. Separate the skittles by colour into 5 different containers. Add 150ml vodka to each container and place in the fridge. Leave to dissolve at least overnight, but preferably for 2 days.
2. Once the skittles have fully dissolved, use a coffee filters to skim off the excess fat/sugar place into bottles and keep chilled.
3. Serve either in shots or with lemonade.

Eat Me Cupcakes

Prep time: 40 mins Cook time: 20 mins Serves: makes 20 cupcakes


Ingredients:

60ml boiling water
3 tea bags
200g margarine
200g caster sugar
200g self raising flour
2 medium eggs
4tbsp lemon curd
500g ready to roll fondant icing
various food colourings/dyes
piping icing
various dragees/sprinkles for decoration

1. Place the tea bags into a container and pour the boiling water over them. Set this to one side for at least 30 minutes.
2. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5 and place cupcake cases into a bun tray.
3. Beat the margarine and sugar together in a large bowl until creamy. Sift roughly half the flour into the bowl and fold into the margarine and sugar mixture. Add one egg to the bowl and beat well. Sift the rest of the flour into the bowl and fold into the mixture. Beat in the final egg until all ingredients are combined.
4. The tea should now be cool, and quite thick (almost syrupy). Add the tea to the cake batter a spoonful at a time, mixing well.
5. Carefully spoon 1tbsp of cake batter into each cupcake case and bake for 20 mins, until light brown and firm to touch. Remove the cupcakes from the oven and place on a wire wrack to cool.
6. Whilst the cupcakes are cooling, colour the fondant icing. I used 5 different colours (100g icing each) and this was more than enough to cover 4 cupcakes in each colour, plus some fondant left over.
7. Once the cupcakes are cool, spread each one with a thin layer of lemon curd. Roll out the coloured fondant on a powdered surface until around 7-10mm thick. Use a round cookie cutter to cut 4 circles from the fondant and place these on top of the cupcakes. Decorate each cupcake with writing icing, dragees and sprinkles and enjoy with a cup of tea (or some skittles vodka)

Next time we're flying to neverland, and I'll be making a map for when we're there!

Happy Thoughts
x