Union Jack Cup Cakes, For the Royal Wedding Buffet

This was one of my original ideas for the buffet I am catering for, the theme is Red, White and Blue for the Royal wedding celebrations on the 28th April. The inspiration for these cup cakes is obviously the Union Jack. I have already played around with individual cakes with the United Kingdom flag, these can be seen in my earlier posts. http://andy-asimplechef.blogspot.com/2011/04/royal-wedding-street-party-ideas.html

I won't bore you with the recipe because its a simple sponge mix piped into the small paper cup cake cups.

Filling the paper cups using a piping bag for less mess

As I will be catering for children on this themed buffet I decided to use mini cup cakes. These mini cup cake cups are great for children as they can take one of each colour You can purchase many colours and designs from  the web or a professional store.

So I baked these for just 10 minutes at 180 C in the oven.

I let them cool for half an hour and topped them with icing, I used a liquid food colouring for this icing, and added pasteurised egg whites to the icing sugar. The icing soon starts to go firm to the touch and will take a day or so to harden completely.  I prefer the icing to be crisp on the outside and soft in the centre.

Iced Mini Cup cakes

Arranging the finished cake was the hardest, I had to make sure the colours were in the correct order and changed them several times. I've placed them out 12 x 15 so a total of 180 cup cakes, I am so happy I decided to make them smaller, I would  have no room on the buffet table for the rest of my dishes.

Another great idea for this type of cake is a butter cream topping, a simple mix of icing sugar and softened butter, you can also add food colouring to this, but I would recommend using a colouring paste rather than the liquid colours. I find that much less is needed to produce a deeper shade of colour.

The finished Cup Cake Union Jack

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