Chocolate Soil Cupcakes

Begin by making the jelly worms. Soak the gelatine leaf in cold water for 5 minutes. Cut the jelly into cubes in a bowl. Pour over the boiling water and stir to completely dissolve. Squeeze the water from the gelatine leaves and add to the bowl. Next stir through the cold water and leave to cool. Once the jelly is cool, oil your jelly worm mould lightly with your fingers or a paintbrush. Place your moulds on to a baking tray too make it easier to move your jelly in and out of the fridge. Using your jelly mould pipette start to fill your worm moulds with half of the jelly mixture. Once you have used half the mixture stir through the milk to create a milky strawberry jelly mix and repeat the pipette filing process to create a mass of jelly worms! Place in the fridge to fully set. Ideally overnight.

Next make your biscuit dough. Using a hand-held electric whisk, or in a free-standing mixer, beat the butter and sugar together until smooth and creamy. Break the egg into a mug or jug, add the vanilla extract and beat with a fork. Gradually add the egg to the creamed mixture, beating well after each addition. Sift the flour into the mixture in two or three batches, mixing in each batch gently, to make a soft dough. Halve the dough and pat each piece into a rough disc (this makes it easier to roll out later). Put into two food bags, or wrap in clingfilm. Refrigerate for several hours.

To make the cupcakes, preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/gas 4. Put the butter, sugar and golden syrup into a saucepan. Set the saucepan over a medium heat and warm, stirring occasionally, until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved. Remove the saucepan from the heat and add the chopped chocolate and stir until melted and smooth. Pour in your milk and coffee and mix together. This will also help cool down the mixture slightly. Pour into the bowl of a stand mixer or separate bowl and leave to cool fully.

Break the eggs into a mug or jug, add the vanilla and beat together with a fork. Once the chocolate mixture has cooled, add in the eggs and beat with the whisk attachment or hand held electric whisk to fully combine. Finally, sift the cocoa powder, and flour into the mixture, beating until everything is well combined and no flour is visible in the wet, smooth batter. Carefully pour the mixture into 12 muffin cases, dividing it equally. Bake for approx 20–25 minutes or until the cakes have risen and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out fairly clean. Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before transferring, to a wire rack to cool completely.

While the cakes are baking, make the ganache. Put the double cream, chocolate and golden syrup into a heat proof bowl set over a bain marie saucepan. Gently heat over a medium heat, stirring occasionally until the chocolates melted and everything’s combined, smooth and shiny. Leave to cool fully, in the fridge if needed.

Next make the soil piñata. Put the chocolate, butter and sugar into a heat proof bowl set over a bain marie saucepan. Gently heat over a medium heat, stirring occasionally until the chocolates melted and everything’s combined, smooth and shiny. Add in the cereal and stir together to fully coat in the chocolate mixture. Transfer on to a parchment lined tray and spread out fully. Leave to set in the fridge, breaking up when firm enough to handle to create a mix of chocolate cereal.

While your chocolate cereal, ganache and cakes are cooling roll out your biscuit cows. Remove one half of the the biscuit dough from the refrigerator and roll out between sheets of baking parchment to the thickness of a £1 coin. If the dough seems very sticky, dust it and the parchment lightly with a little flour. Peel off the top parchment sheet, then cut out 12 cow heads. Peel away the excess dough and slide your biscuit lined parchment on to a flat baking tray and refrigerate for 15 mins. Re-roll the trimmings to cut out more biscuits if needed, on another piece of parchment the same as before. Bake the biscuits for 10–12 minutes until they are lightly golden brown around the edges. Leave them to firm up for a few minutes on the baking tray, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Once fully cooled, create your cow print fondant. Remove 1/5 of the white fondant and mix with a little red/pink food colouring to create a soft pink shade to make the cows nose and ears with later. Roll out the remainder of the white fondant between sheets of baking parchment. Take small pieces of the black fondant and form into black splodges and place on your white fondant to create a cow print effect. Use the cow head cutter to cut out 12 cow heads to go on your cow head biscuits. Place your soft pink fondant on to create your nose and use a cocktail stick and molding tools to create the eyes, nose and ears indentation. Stick on the biscuits with a little milk using a paintbrush.

To make your coconut grass, place the desiccated coconut in a food mixer and mix together your green food colouring with a touch of water. Add this in with the coconut and mix together to fully distribute and coat the coconut blades of grass green!

To assemble and decorate your cakes, use a small sharp knife to remove the ‘core’ of your cupcakes, to fit in your ‘soil piñata’ into. Don’t go right through to the base, but extract enough cake with the aid of a teaspoon to remove a decent core. Keep these cut-out ‘cone’ pieces of cake and cut the top part off to create a lid for your core. Place the remaining part of the ‘cone’ and any extra carved out crumbs into a bowl to crumble into the soil and over your cakes later. Mix some of the crumbs with your chocolate cereal, mixed seeds, chocolate covered seeds/raisins and salted corn. Place into your cut out cores leaving enough space to add your jelly worms. Cover your worms with more soil piñata mix before placing the cut-out piece of cake on top, to act almost like a lid. Each piece will now protrude slightly above the surface of the cake.

Transfer and divide a tablespoon or two of chocolate ganache on top of each cupcake and spread over with a small palette knife. To decorate scatter over some of the green desiccated coconut to look like grass and chocolate cake crumbs to look like soil. Place your cow head biscuit carefully into this to look like its eating the grass, pressing a few stalks of rosemary in to look like tufts of grass. Placing a wooden coffee stirrer into the cake to help the cows stay upright. Enjoy with Yeo Valley ice cream to accompany the jelly worms!