As some of you may be aware, November is also Movember, a month set aside every year for Prostate Cancer awareness and fund-raising. It’s also an opportunity for fellas all around Australia to grow a moustache and use that as a talking point and a bit of a joke to get some money raised.
My lovely husband, bless his heart, started growing his mo early (much to my dismay) and has kept up the effort throughout this month, for fun and for money. Although moustaches are very much out of vogue, he works with a larger older work group, and tells me that several of his colleagues sport moustaches every day of the year! And getting on-side, those lovely people decided to hold a lunch (gold-coin donation) for the cause, and my services were called on in preparation for the event.
Hubby knows that baking is my first love, so that this would not be a terrible inconvenience. He specifically requested blueberry muffins (the theme is blue) and I decided that a cream cheese frosting decorated with a moustache would look very cute.
Using a previous recipe, and substituting blueberries, the basic cake was a no-brainer. The frosting was borrowed from another recipe and was good to go. I have no piping bag, but swirling it on with a knife was fairly straightforward.
The moustaches were another matter! I wanted blue ones, but after shopping for blue card with no success, and then googling for ideas, I found a template on Etsy for a variety of black moustaches that I could print out. After gluing these onto black cardboard, the time-consuming part was cutting them out {after midnight last night when I couldn’t sleep}…
ubby helped with some of the more fiddly bits over breakfast, and then it was just a matter of finding the toothpickssticking the mo’s onto toothpicks and inserting them into the tops of the prettily frosted cupcakes, and we were good to go!
BLUEBERRY & ALMOND MUFFINS
Makes 18 cupcakes
Ingredients
1 ½ cups SR flour
½ cup almond meal
½ cup sugar
¼ tsp. salt
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup Vaalia Lemon Crème yoghurt
½ cup vegetable oil
1½ tsp. vanilla extract
1½ cups fresh or frozen blueberries
Method
1. In a bowl, combine first five ingredients.
2. Combine next four ingredients in another bowl. Stir in dry ingredients just until moistened. Fold in berries.
3. Line muffin tin with paper cupcake cups and fill these ¾ full. Bake at 190 deg C for 15 minutes, or until a metal skewer comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes in tin, and then remove to a cooling rack.
ICING (FROSTING)
This makes a lot of frosting (possibly too much), but more is better, especially if piping it on.
Ingredients
60g butter, softened
250g cream cheese, softened
3 cups soft icing mixture, sifted
Beat butter and cream cheese together until smooth, then add the icing sugar and beat for 2 minutes, or until light and fluffy. Spread (or pipe) thickly over the tops of cupcakes and allow to set.
MOUSTACHES
As mentioned above, I used a template and after printing, glued these onto black cardboard as a backing. Next time, I would go with thinner paper as it is easier and quicker to cut. But cardboard was all I had!
Once they have been glued, dried and cut out, stick each moustache individually to a toothpick, and once prepared, they are ready to be inserted into the top of a pretty cupcake and transported to your very own Movember fund-raising event.
This was so much fun! I had forgotten how much I like to glue and paste! 😉
