Arizona cupcakes

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 25 cupcakes, you will need:

• 1 100 g butter
• 2 30 g caster sugar
• 3 10 g Vanilla sugar
• 4 100 g flour
• 5 2 Eggs
• 6 1 pinch salt
• 7 5 g baking powder
• 8 100 g Marzipan (almond paste)
• 9 1 tablespoon icing sugar
• 10 150 g fondant icing
• Total weight: 610 grams

Times:

Preparation	Cooking	Start to finish
1 hour 15 min.	35 min.	1 hour 50 min.

Step by step recipe

• 1: Cut 100 g butter into small pieces and tip into the bowl of the mixer, along with 30 g caster sugar and 10 g Vanilla sugar.
• 2: Knead for a few minutes on slow speed until thoroughly mixed.
• 3: Then add 100 g flour, 2 Eggs, 1 pinch salt and 5 g baking powder.
• 4: Knead again on medium speed just until evenly mixed.
  Preheat oven to 180°C (360°F).
• 5: Divide the mixture between small moulds, preferably in paper cake cases. Do not over fill as the cakes will expand during cooking.
  You can divide out the mixture with a spoon, but it's much quicker and easier to use a forcing bag.
• 6: Put in the oven and bake for around 35 minutes (watch for colouring).
  Leave to cool on a wire rack.
• 7: Meanwhile, make the cacti using green marzipan.
• 8: Melt 150 g fondant icing in a bain-marie.
  Note: if you don't have fondant icing, make up a quick glacé icing using 100g icing sugar mixed with 1 tablespoon water, or just a little more.
• 9: Spread icing over the cupcakes...
• 10: ... and place a cactus on top immediately.
• 11: Decorate all the cupcakes like this.

Remarks

You can start with the basic cupcake mix and let your imagination run wild!
A quick variation: replace the marzipan decorations with pistachio paste, which gives a more realistic saguaro cactus colour.
For that real Arizona touch, the sun should make an appearance on the cupcakes, maybe as a small circle of yellow marzipan at the top to left or right of the cactus? Oh, well - for next time.

---