Nigella Lawson’s Fairy Cakes
These tiny cupcakes can be decorated to your heart's desire, making them a gorgeous gift to bring to a party, or a fun treat to decorate with friends.
Introduction
These are so quick both to make and to bake that it really is possible to whip some up for after dinner when you get home from work. On the whole, I leave my fairy cakes plain and unadorned beneath; it’s above, when I get to play with colours and flowers and sugar decorations, that a little imagination and artistry comes into play. Not that I can claim much credit, certainly not for the latter: I buy rice-paper roses and sugar daisies and pansies rather than make them. But I like the playing part – choosing the colours, the detail. My weak spot is the white-on-white look. (In fact, I’ve told Hettie, my saviour and right-hand, who’s worked with me since this book’s inception, that when she gets married she has to let me make her a stacked pyramid of these. Luckily, she’s up for it.) My other favourite – and then I really will leave you to your own devices – is the fifties pistachio-green version (Colourway’s food-colouring paste in ‘Gooseberry’) with the pale-pink rice-paper rose atop.
Ingredients
| 125g | unsalted butter, softened |
| 125g | caster sugar |
| 2 large | eggs |
| 125g | self-raising flour |
| ½ tsp | vanilla extract |
| 2-3 tbsp | milk |
| 500g packet | instant royal icing |
Essential kit
You will need: a 12-bun muffin tin lined with 12 muffin papers.
Method
Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6.
It couldn’t be simpler to make fairy cakes: just put all the ingredients except for the milk in the processor and then blitz till smooth. Pulse while adding milk down the funnel, to make for a soft, dropping consistency. (If you do want to make by hand, just follow the method for the Victoria sponge.) I know it looks as if you’ll never make this scant mixture fit 12 bun cases, but you will, so just spoon and scrape the stuff in, trying to fill each case equally. Put in the oven and bake for 15–20 minutes or until the fairy cakes are cooked and golden on top. As soon as bearable, take the fairy cakes in their cases out of the tin and let cool on a wire rack. I like my cherry-topped fairies to have a little pointy top, but for all floral and other artistic effects, darling, you need to start with a level base, so once they’re cool, cut off any mounded peaks so that you’ve got a flat surface for icing.
I’ve specified a whole packet of instant royal icing because the more colours you go in for the more you use, though really 250g should be enough. I make up a big, uncoloured batch, and then remove a few spoonfuls at a time to a cereal bowl and add, with my probe (a broken thermometer, but a skewer is just as good), small dots of colours from the paste tubs, stirring with a teaspoon and then adding more colouring, very slowly, very cautiously until I’ve got the colour I want (pastel works best here, whatever your everyday aesthetic). I then get another spoon to spread the icing on each cake (it’s important to use a different spoon for icing than for mixing or you’ll end up with crumbs in the bowl of icing) and then I leave it a moment to dry only slightly on the surface before sticking on my rose, daisy or whole bouquet of either.
VARIATION
To make lavender cupcakes, follow the basic recipe above, but reduce the vanilla to a few drops, about ¼ teaspoon if you feel like measuring. Half an hour before making up the mixture, put 125ml of milk into a little saucepan with 6–8 sprigs of lavender. Bring to the boil, but just before it starts boiling remove from the heat, cover with foil and leave for 20 minutes. Then strain into a cup and leave for another 10 minutes. Make up the batter as above, using a few tablespoonfuls of lavender milk at the end to loosen the mixture in place of the usual plain milk. Cook as normal and when cool, make up a fairly thick icing by mixing 250g icing sugar, sieved, with more of the lavender milk. Tint it ivory with the colour paste ‘Caramel’ and place a sprig of lavender on top
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