Bake me a cake....

Good evening everyone! Something a little bit different from me today.......a little bit of baking. I'm quite the lover of cakes and nothing beats a home-made cupcake! So I thought I would share with you all how to make these delicious (and light) small cup-cakes // fairy cakes.

What you will need:

1) 110g self-raising flour 

2) 110g caster sugar

3) 110g margarine

4) 2 eggs

5) 1 teaspoon baking powder

6) 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

(It's a good idea to sift the flour and sugar to get any lumps out and also to help achieve maximum 'fluffyness' in the mixture)

Pre-heat your oven to 160 degrees C and whilst that's warming up place all of your weighed out ingredients together in a bowl. Then with either a wooden spoon (muscles needed!!) or an electric whisk, mix them all together and keep doing so until the mixture becomes really light and fluffy......it should look something a little bit like this:

Then once it has reached this consistency you can start spooning the mixture into bun cases (I find using two teaspoons really useful as you put the mixture on one and use the other to scrape it off). Ensure that an even amount of mixture is distributed between all of the bun cases otherwise some will be bigger than others....about a third full is the right amount.

They don't look particularly impressive but trust me once they go into the oven they rise really quickly. Pop the tray into the oven and leave them to cook for approximately 20 minutes (make sure you check back regularly) until they are springy to touch and golden in colour.

Once they are done, take them out of the oven and out of the tray and leave them to cool on a cooling rack before you ice them.

I iced mine with Glace icing that I mixed up which is really simple to make-

200g sifted icing sugar

55ml boiling water

tiny bit of gel food colouring

*Recipes and method taken from Kate Shirazi's book- 'Cupcake Magic'*

The beauty of cakes is that you can be as extravagant or as simple as you like.....I'll leave it up to you!