The Queen's Tarts

I first saw these cupcakes in this wonderful little book at work: What's New, Cupcake?. It follows on from their first book 'Hello, Cupcake!', which is equally as adorable. When I saw them, I automatically thought they were just meant to be the Queen of Heart's tarts! So, I gave it a go. 

They're surprisingly simple to make, yet so delicious and adorable! Don't be put off by the idea of having to use a piping bag, it took me a little while to get it right, and in the end none of them were perfect, but they still looked fabulous. Want to see what all the fuss is about? 

Is it just me, or are they possibly the cutest form of cupcake ever? Actually, that could be argued, but for now, they're pretty cute, and they're incredibly simple to make.

Pretty standard ingredients: butter, sugar, eggs, flour and vanilla extract. Simple.

First things first, mix together the butter and sugar. 

Whenever I make cakes, I'll always mix the butter first to soften it up as much as possible before adding the sugar- not essential but a bit of a habit. Keep mixing it until everything goes almost white in colour and looks fluffy.

Then add the eggs. 

Now, we need to have a bit of a chat about eggs. People have very different opinions of how to add eggs. Some people say beat them first in a separate bowl, others say to add one at a time, some even suggest adding egg whites and yolks separately, but in my opinion, if you're using an electric whisk (or if you've got incredible stamina) you can just add them all in one go. If you're mixing by hand, then maybe two at a time, simply so it doesn't curdle. Anyway, at this point you need to add your eggs- however you like. 

Next things, well... next I suppose, is the flour.

Again, we may have to have a little chat about the flour. Now, I grew up making cakes with my nanny (to read more of this click here,) and she was always very particular about how cakes were made, including how ingredients were mixed, and what they were mixed with. When it came to the flour, it HAD to be FOLDED with a METAL spoon. Always metal, never wooden! It was like committing a sin to use a wooden spoon, let alone beat it rather than fold it! However, since I've invested in an electric whisk, I've gotten rather lazy and now do everything with that, so, following my mantra of 'chuck it all in at once', the flour goes in together. All of it. At the same time. If you're someone who likes to put milk in their cakes then you may prefer to do one third milk to one third flour until every thing's mixed up, it's entirely up to you, but if you've been baking using a metal spoon for folding flour, try this! It works just as well- sorry nanny! Also at this point, you should add in the vanilla extract.

And that's it... violá! Into the cases they go. I used muffin cases for these because they allow me to make bigger cakes and still have space for icing them without overflowing and looking messy. When they're ready they go into a preheated oven (180c - sorry i don't know gas mark / Fahrenheit!) 

So, while you're 'tart' is cooking, you can begin to prepare the filling and the crust. For this you'll need:

Icing sugar, butter and jelly beans - LOTS of jelly beans! (This is of course, unless you have access to a shop that sells jelly beans in individual colours, because in that case, you'll only need the specific colours.)

So, now for the fun part... jelly bean seperating...

You thought I was kidding. Five packets, and what felt like several hours later, i'd seperated them all. Thinking back, this probably isn't essential, but none the less it makes it easier when you're icing the cakes. (It was also interesting to see that there were so many yellow beans when most people I know prefer red and purple ones... back to cakes maybe?)

So once you've done this, your cakes should be ready, here were my beauties before they got iced. I could have quite happily sat and eaten all of these, but I managed to only stick to one... just for testing... of course!

Allow the cakes to cool fully before icing them, if not the buttercream goes all slippy and it can sink into the cakes. Disaster. I didn't take any photos of my buttercream for 2 reasons. 1) I didn't follow a recipe so it took a couple of additions of sugar to get it right. 2) I didn't want to completely cover my camera in icing sugar. Not a good look.

Anyway, make up a batch of buttercream using icing sugar and butter. I then used gel food colouring to tint it to look more like pastry (I wasn't overly happy with the shade of mine, but i got impatient before i could make it look just right.) Then ice them following these steps:

 Get a small amount of butter cream and put it in the middle of the cupcake. Don't go all the way to the edges, and don't make the layer to thick otherwise the jelly beans squish in too much.

Next, either strategically place, or simply pour on some jelly beans, (this is why I seperated mine- so the buttercream didn't set by the time i'd found 15 jelly beans of the same colour.)

 Next, get a piping bag and pipe straight lines straight across, then spint the cupcake round and pipe more lines so you make diamond shapes. 

 Then switch nozzles to one that is thin but slightly curved, (one day i'll post something to explain the nozzles im using,) and then pipe horizontally along the edge of the cake doubling bake on yourself to for a loop at the end, then turn the cake and repeat all the way around the cake. 

Again, i'm still not entirely happy with how the 'crust' turned out, so you may find a better way of piping than what i've done. Even so, i'm pretty impressed with how these turned out overall, and at the rate they disappeared, i'm pretty sure my family were too!