Lemon and Lilac Cupcakes

By Mel Evans

We love trying new things at our Forest School sessions and experimentation is central to the Forest School ethos. We encourage children to have a go, then reflect on the outcome and adapt and re frame where necessary.

With this in mind, yesterday we decided to try something new. I have been seeing lots of recipes using Lilac flowers so we decided to devise our own.

Lilac is a tree or bush found in gardens. It has distinctive lilac or purple blooms with a strong scent.

There are three ways to incorporate Lilac into your baking. You can make a Lilac infused sugar using the same method as our Elder Flower Sugar. You can make a syrup using the same method as our Cherry Blossom Syrup or you can use whole flowers, as in the recipe below.

Ingredients - 100 g Caster Sugar, 100 g Butter, 100 g Self Raising Flower, 2 Large Eggs, Zest of a Lemon and a small cup of fresh Lilac Flowers.

We creamed together the butter and sugar, added the eggs, then flour and lemon zest.

We folded in the Lilac flowers.

We spooned into cupcake cases and baked at 180 Degrees Celsius for around 15 minutes.

We made an icing from butter, icing sugar and lemon juice.

We iced the cakes and decorated them with fresh flowers.

The cakes were delicious, but the dominant flavour was definitely the lemon. The flowers give a beautiful look to the sponge though and retain their striking colour even after baking.