Lavender Trust Cupcakes

• 1 cup self-rising flour
• ½ cup very soft unsalted butter
• 7 tablespoons lavender sugar, sifted
• 2 eggs
• pinch salt
• few tablespoons milk

for the icing:

• approx. 9 ounces instant royal icing
• violet icing color
• handful of real lavender
  
  

  Preheat the oven to 400°F, line a 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners and get butter, eggs and milk out of the refrigerator in time to get to room temperature before you start.

  Make the cupcakes as usual: put all the cake ingredients, bar the milk, into the food processor and combine, adding milk to bind. Using spoon and rubber spatula, fill the cake-cups equally and bake for 20 minutes or so, until cooked (see page 195).

  Cool the cupcakes as for the lemon cupcakes, and slice off any humped tops. Make up the icing according to package instructions, dyeing the mixture a faint lilac with a spot or two of food coloring: I like to use the solid pastes, for which you may have to go to a specialist cake decoration shop, I’m afraid; the color you’ll want here is generally labeled “grape violet.” Go carefully, though: we want pastel serenity here, not seventies record-sleeve murk.

  Top each pretty-pale cupcake with a little sprig of lavender before the icing’s set dry.