For a midweek treat and with an afternoon off, I decided to bake some vanilla sponge fairy cakes. Not quite a cupcake, and definitely not a muffin, these bite size portions of sugary softness take me right back to my childhood when my sister and I would make Dennis the Menace fairy cakes with my Mum.
Although these fairy cakes are slightly more grown up, I still used a boxed mix from the supermarket. Yes, ok I know it's cheating but it's an awful lot easier when you don't have masses of time and they still come out delicious.* I also added a little lemon juice to mine to give it a bit of a zing. If you want to make the batter from scratch, I've used this recipe before and it came out great.
To finish off my cakes I topped them with a lemon icing and scattered some lemon zest on top for decoration.
This was also the first time I've tried out silicon cupcake cases. And I was very impressed. They kept their shape whilst cooking, were super easy to clean and are certainly easier to store in my tiny kitchen (and I mean tiny) than a metal baking tin. Plus you can bake many more at a time because you aren't restricted to the 12 holes in a tin. Absolutely brilliant.
*If you want to cheat like I did, I used Tesco Small Cake Mix - you only have to add one egg, beat and add some water.
