14: Bloody Cupcakes!

I both love and hate cupcakes. They are the bane of my existence and empyrean joy when I get them right; equally as deadly as biscuits, made even more so by our oven which sometimes overcooks or undercooks by 20 degrees depending on its mood, they can often be done on the outside and liquid in the middle, or I can't tell until they have had plenty of time and I've cut one open that they are still too soft in their guts. Those blasted elderflower cupcakes - which would never have happened if we hadn't got elderflower cordial so I could make James Ramsden's ice-cream - are a prime example of my difficulty with these tiny sponges. Too little cordial, and I produced perfectly soft and fluffy cupcakes with a faint taste of golden syrup and absolutely no elderflower perceptible. Too much cordial, and they were worthless wet rubbish, so damp that the paper case was wet underneath and so was the hollow in the muffin tin, and they hadn't cooked properly. Paul Hollywood's reproaches about messing with the structure of the cake batter resounded in my ears.

5: Lemon Icing Fairy Cakes

I made these today, Sunday 9th, and decorated them with little citrus strands and crystallized jelly shapes that we bought at the food shop. Mum and Tid decided they only wanted the ones with citrus strands on, so I actually hand to warn them off eating the last one so Dad could get a citrus strand cupcake as well as a sugar jelly cupcake. I am feeling much more confident in making cupcakes; or rather, fairy cakes. The difference is apparently in the depth of the paper case and the sponge itself, cupcakes are significantly bigger. This is actually a fairy cake recipe.

Ingredients
125g unsalted butter, softened
125g caster sugar
2 large eggs
125g selfraising flour
Half teaspoon vanilla extract
2-3 tablespoons milk

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Cream the butter and the caster sugar together in a large bowl. Beat the eggs into the mixture, followed by the flour and the vanilla extract until you produce a smooth batter. Add the milk slowly while stirring, half a tablespoon at a time, until it is all in. Spoon the cake batter equally between twelve cupcake papers in a cupcake pan and cook for 15-20 minutes until well risen and golden. Use a skewer if you’re not sure it is cooked all the way through, cupcakes are temperamental and can move swiftly between cooked and burnt. Put them on a wire rack to cool down and top in ten minutes with icing so the icing doesn’t run while the cake is too warm. To make the icing: Juice of a whole lemon squeezed into a bowl, stir in a lot of icing sugar until it becomes a cloudy white syrup, which can be smoothed onto the fairy cakes and then topped with sprinkles.