Easy fairy cakes
- Prepare
- less than 30 mins
- Cook
- 10 to 30 mins
- Serve
- Makes 12–16 fairy cakes
This easy fairy cakes recipe is perfect for baking with children. Decorate with a little drizzly icing and plenty of sprinkles, or go for the full butterfly effect. If you want to change the flavour, quantity or ice your fairy cakes, use our cake calculator to customise this recipe.
Each serving provides 217 kcal, 1.9g protein, 35.3g carbohydrate (of which 29.4g sugars), 7.4g fat (of which 4.4g saturates), 0.3g fibre and 0.11g salt.
Ingredients
- 110g/4oz butter or margarine, softened at room temperature
- 110g/4oz caster sugar
- 2 free-range eggs, lightly beaten
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 110g/4oz self-raising flour
- 1–2 tbsp milk
For the icing
- 300g/10½oz icing sugar
- 2–3 tbsp water
- 2–3 drops food colouring
- hundreds and thousands, or other sprinkles
Method
Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4 and line 2 x 12-hole fairy cake tins with 12–16 paper cases (depending on big you want your fairy cakes).
Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl until pale. Beat in the eggs, a little at a time, and stir in the vanilla extract.
Fold in the flour using a large metal spoon. Add a little milk until the mixture is a soft dropping consistency and spoon the mixture into the paper cases until they are half full.
Bake in the oven for 8–10 minutes, or until golden-brown on top and a skewer inserted into one of the cakes comes out clean. Set aside to cool for 10 minutes, then remove from the tin and cool on a wire rack.
For the icing, sift the icing sugar into a large mixing bowl and gradually stir in enough water to create a smooth mixture (approximately 3 tablespoons). Stir in the food colouring.
To ice the fairy cakes, drizzle the icing over the cakes, sprinkle with decorations and set aside until the icing hardens.
Recipe tips
If you are using butter (rather than baking spread), it's crucial to soften it first to ensure it will easily combine with the other ingredients to make light, fluffy cakes. Watch the technique video for tips on how to do this quickly.
Ideally, your eggs should be at room temperature before using them to make cakes. It's not essential, but it helps prevent the batter splitting (where it starts to look grainy as you add the eggs). If your batter splits when adding eggs, mix in 1–2 spoonfuls of flour to bring it back together.
It's best to use an electric hand mixer to make the cake batter, but you can use a wooden spoon if you don't have a mixer. If you are using a spoon, ensuring the butter is very soft will make this much easier.
The 'soft dropping consistency' referred to in step 3, is when a spoonful of mixture drops easily into the bowl when given a gentle shake.
If you want flat tops on your fairy cakes, try lowering the oven temperature by 20C and baking them for a few minutes longer than directed. Make sure you don't overfill the cases (they should be about half full).
Once cooked the fairy cakes will keep for up to 3 days.
