Fishing for Easter eggs...wacky lemon curd chicken cakes

Take a fairy cake, add a marzipan head and beak and hold
a 'hen party' for your friends this Easter.

Lemon curd 

(for gluing on the wings)

125 g (4 oz) butter in cubes

250 g (8 oz) sugar

Finely grated zest and juice of 2 lemons

4 egg yolks

Put the butter, sugar, lemon zest and juice together in a bowl that fits on top of a saucepan of simmering water. Not too much hot water  - but not too little either. Stir until everything melts and then beat until smooth. Continue beating as you add the egg yolks and just keep beating and beating until it is thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon. Don't worry, it gets a bit thicker in the fridge when it cools. 

Sponge cake 

(based on Miller Howe recipe)

Preheat the oven to 180^oC/350^oF
250 g butter
4 eggs, beaten (free-range or your chicken cakes will come back to haunt you :o)
250 g flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
finely grated zest of 2 oranges (we used clementines that needed eating up)
juice of one orange (or clementine)
juice of one lemon

Cream together the sugar and butter in a big bowl until light, fluffy and almost white. Beat in the eggs a little at a time. Fold in the sifted flour and then add the citurs juices and zest. Don't worry. Our mixture looked all odd at this point - kind of separated but I thought 'I'm not wasting all that' so we put it muffin cases, cooked it anyway and it got its act together in the oven and came out lovely! Wait until they are springy to the touch and resist the urge to keep opening the oven door to look at them or they'll flop.

We threaded mini liquorice allsorts onto long red liquorice 'shoe laces' to make chicken legs using a kebab skewer. It was actually very fiddly and we decided they looked just as good without. 

First you make the sponge buns in muffin cases. Then you slice the top off,
like you do with fairy cakes, cut the circle in half and use lemon curd to stick the
halves on at angles to make wings. If your cakes don't rise awfully high, then
just cut another cake in half to make two sets of wings (like we did;o) 

Now take a lump of marzipan and mould it into a head and neck.
Add whatever sweets for eyes, beak and comb you fancy
and stick the head and legs on in front of the wings.

Cool chick with beak and Beats.

I wouldn't want to meet these chickens on a dark night. But they were surprisingly tasty.
Finger-licking good, in fact!