Flower Cupcakes

For the cupcakes: heat the oven to 180°C (160° fan) 350°F gas 4. Place 10-12 paper cases in a muffin tin.

Mix together the butter, egg, yoghurt, lavender, orange juice and zest in a mixing bowl.

Sift in the flour, baking powder and sugar and stir until just combined.

Spoon into the paper cases and bake for 20-25 minutes until golden and risen. Cool in the tin for 5 minutes then place on a wire rack to cool completely.

For the buttercream: beat the butter until very soft and pale.

Sift in 1/3 of the icing sugar. Mix well. Add another third and then add the vanilla extract. Finally

add the remaining icing sugar. Beat until very smooth. You may need to add a little milk to loosen the buttercream.

Set aside about 6 tablespoons of buttercream. Divide the remainder into 6 bowls and stir a little blue, orange and pink colouring into 3 bowls.

Fit 3 piping bags with a petal tip nozzle, with the thick end at the bottom. Spoon a plain and a coloured buttercream side by side into each piping bag so that the colours sit evenly next to each other inside the bag.

Pipe a centre of each colour onto each cake. Pipe more petals of the same colour around each centre, then pipe more petals around the outside to form flowers.

Stir a little green colouring into about half of the reserved plain buttercream and put into a small piping bag. Pipe a leaf on each cake.