BakingMad's Christmas Fairy Cupcakes

This week I was asked if I would like to take part in a baking campaign for BakingMad, which I jumped it because I always love their website and they always have ideas on there.

I thought I'd do a post about cupcake making, cupcakes were my first baking love so I though it'd be the natural choice! It's also coming up to Christmas (yay!) so I though I'd get some posts in before it actually comes round and it'll be a bit too late to talk about so here's my post for a batch of Christmas Fairy Cakes.

While as I've said before I'm not a huuuuge fan of Christmas cake, a light version in the form of a cupcake is a perfectly acceptable substitute, they're also really cute and you can go to town on the decoration!

This recipe says you can use runny icing, but I absolutely love buttercream so I found a really love recipe on their site for this too. Because they have dark sugar, spices and dried fruit in them they come out looking dark, this almost makes them look like little Christmas puddings when you decorate them, which I actually really love!

Christmas Fair Cake Ingredients:

200g Dark Muscovado Sugar (Billington's)

175g butter, chopped

3 eggs, beaten (Happy Eggs)

200g plain white flour (Allinson Nature Friendly)

1/2 tsp baking powder

1tsp ground mixed spice

1tsp ground cinnamon

2 tsp ginger, freshly grated

1 orange zest and juice 750g mixed dried fruit 85g pecan nuts, chopped 85g ground almonds Method

Tip your sugar, butter, dried fruit, ginger orange zest and juice into a large pan. Pour over the juice and turn the heat on and slowly bring to the boil, stirring frequently to melt the butter. Reduce the heat and bubble gently for 10 minutes – stir regularly. Set aside to cool Stir in the nuts, eggs and ground almonds into the fruit Sift in the flour, baking powder and spices and stir everything together, gently but thoroughly. Heat oven to 150C/130C fan/gas 2. Scoop the cake mix into 24 fairy cake cases then level tops with a spoon dipped in hot water. Bake for 35-45 mins until golden and just firm to touch. A skewer inserted should come out clean. Cool on a wire rack Make up the fondant icing to a spreading consistency, then swirl on top of each cupcake, then leave to set. Will keep in a tin for 3 weeks.  Or swirl on buttercream ready for decoration. This when you can add any other decorations like silver balls or holly and berries made from coloured fondant icing. To be really Christmassy you can even add mini candy canes and these are brilliant for kids :) Eat. Nom! Buttercream ingredients 50g unsalted butter, softened 200g icing sugar, sifted, Silver Spoon Homegrown Pure vanilla extract blend, Nielsen-Massey Method: 1.Beat the butter and sugar together until smooth, adding orange juice, coffee or hot water if liked to help soften it and make a soft smooth consistency. If it's for a plain buttercream recipe like this I tend to only add the water. P.S can you spot the little Star Wars bobblehead? Whoops! Article commissioned by Performics

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