Mini cupcake heaven

Yesterday my 11 year old friend Poppy came over to do some baking, she had her heart set on cupcakes and had even bought her box of baking goodies with her. She also happens to be a major sweet tooth so her favourite part was making (and trying) the icing. We used a recipe from my 'Ladies, a plate' cookbook and had such a fun morning creating these delicious mouthfuls.

FOR THE CAKES

4 oz butter

3/4 cup caster sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla essence

FOR THE BUTTER CREAM ICING

2 cups icing sugar

4 oz butter

2 tbsn milk

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

GETTING READY

Preheat oven to 180C and put paper cases into 24 cupcake tins. Soften butter. Bring eggs to room temperature.

MIXING AND BAKING

1. Cream butter until smooth, add the sugar gradually and beat until the mixture is light and fluffy.

2. Add the eggs one at a time, beating for at least a minute after each addition.

3. Sift the flour and baking powder together and add to the mixture alternately with the milk and vanilla.

4. Spoon into the paper cases and bake for about 20 minutes. Cool on rack.

FINISHING

1. Make the icing by combining half the sifted icing sugar with the softened butter, milk and vanilla and beating until smooth.

2. Add the remaining icing sugar gradually, mixing until the icing is a good spreading consistency. Tint with food colourings and as the cookbook says "embelish your creations as your fancy takes you". (we divided the mixture in half and put natural pink food colouring in one half and lemon juice and zest in the other... the lemon were my favourite. We also used a piping bag to ice them.)

You can make regular size or mini, mini are a bit cuter X