a m y m c c r a c k e n

Last Nov my sister Suzanne came to visit with my nephews Tyler and Kayden. I was the most excited Auntie you could ever imagine but I was also a bit stuck – I hadn’t had kids to entertain before but I figured baking would be a good idea cos (a) it gives them something to do and (b) we have something to bribe them with when we want them to be good haha!

My nephews are pretty young so I knew that me and Suzanne that would do most of the baking but we got them involved by picking colours. They chose GREEN cupcakes then YELLOW icing.

Being a kiwi, I have the Edmonds cookbook – everyone should have a copy of this, it has pretty much every recipe you can imagine and they’re all simple, and easy to follow. So i chose to use the cup cake recipe from there:

CUPCAKES

Ingredients

• 125g butter, softened
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• ½ C caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 C plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ¼ C milk
• 1 tsp food colouring

Method

1. Preheat oven to 190°C
2. Cream butter, vanilla and sugar until light and fluffy
3. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition
4. Sift flour and baking powder together
5. Fold into creamed mixture
6. Stir in milk and food colouring
7. Spoon mixture evenly into the prepared muffin pan that has been lined with paper cases
8. Bake for 15 mins or until cakes spring back when lightly touched
9. Transfer to a wire tack to cool down before decorating

YELLOW BUTTER ICING

Ingredients

• 1 T butter
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• ½ tsp food colouring
• ½ C icing sugar, sifted

Beat all of the above ingredients together until smooth then decorate.

Look at these cuties! I think Kayden Iin the red shirt) was much more interested in eating the sprinkles rather than decorating the cupcakes haha!