Lavender Cupcakes

Can't see anything very appealing about a cake flavored with the stuff you'd normally associate with your granny's bathroom? Put aside those prejudices my friend. Flavoring cakes with lavender is as old as the hills - the Elizabethans used it to perfume theirs (although I don't think they really went in for things like cupcakes). This recipe makes quite delicate, floral cakes, but if you want them to taste more strongly of lavender then you can steep the flowers in the milk for longer, even overnight.

You will need:
120 mls of milk
Some lavender flowers (cut them straight off the bush and give them a little rinse)
120g plain flower
140g caster sugar
1.5 teaspoons of baking powder
Dash of vanilla extract (optional)
40g of butter
1 egg

A couple of hours before I want to make the cakes, I put the lavender flowers into a jug of milk, cover it, and leave it to steep. The longer you leave it, the stronger the flavor. I add a little extra milk so that I can use it for the icing as well, where the taste is slightly stronger.

I preheat my oven to 170c, then I get on with creaming the butter and the sugar together. There's not a lot of butter in this recipe, so it won't be as smooth as normal, so I just cream it until it's all combined and crumby. Then I beat in my egg, and add a couple of drops of vanilla extract. Next comes the flour and the baking powder. I don't bother to sieve it, because my idol Lorraine Pascal doesn't, but you can if you'd like to. I fold in the flour, and then pour the lavender infused milk through a sieve into my batter. I mix it into a soft dropping consistency, where it plops off my spoon if I give it a little shake. I put the batter into my cake cases, and bung them into the oven for 20 minutes. I use muffin cases for cupcakes, but if you want to make fairy cake sized ones then just reduce the cooking time a bit, and be prepared to make about 18, rather than 12.

While the cakes are baking, I whip up my icing. For that, I need:

125g of icing sugar
40g of butter
Food colouring
And a few drops of lavender infused milk.

I beat the butter and the icing sugar together until they're all combined, and it begins to get nice and fluffy. Everything I've read says that you should use a food processor for this, but I don't have one, and I've found that a wooden spoon does the job fine if you use a bit of elbow grease. Look at it like a workout to justify your cake at the end!

Once my icing is nice and soft, I add some food colouring to make it a nice lilac colour. I don't have any purple food colouring, but I do have a bottle of blue and a pot of pink. With a bit of experimentation I get a pretty soft purple, and the added bonus is that by beating in all that food colouring, my icing has got a lot fluffier.

To finish, I beat in the lavender milk and spoon it over the top of my cupcakes. The icing recipe here is actually a half quantity, from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook, but I never like a lot of icing on my cakes. If you're the opposite of me, which I know a lot of people are, just double it. I put a little sprig of lavender on the top of each cake, and I'm done. All in under an hour, which gives me plenty of time to eat them.