Alice in Wonderland cupcakes and gooseberry tarts

First things first!  Here are the toppers that I made with the modelling chocolate I blogged about recently.  Really pleased with them!  They are coconut lime cupcakes, with a coconut buttercream.  I sprinkled them with decorators sugar and edible glitter, then added silver & green dragees to match the wedding theme and finally the white chocolate toppers.  They looked great, tasted wonderful and garnered me many compliments.  They made an amazing display at the wedding together with some fantastic cupcakes from other bakers, a very eclectic and tasty mix!

Next, its the height of summer and the garden is producing its treats for us; this week we harvested gooseberries.   Plenty of them but tiny!  So it seemed only fitting to make them into miniature tarts.  I lined my mini-muffin tin with sweet shortcrust and baked them blind for about 10 minutes.  Spooned in a little quark mixed with an egg yolk and some more sugar and topped with gooseberries.  They baked for about twenty minutes until they were golden and delicious.

Biting into them, they were the perfect combination of tart gooseberries, sweet pastry with the quarky filling just bridging the gap between the two.  Delicious!  If you don't have quark then creme freche would do the same job.