My last couple of posts have been super-duper healthy. Quinoa and beef broth. But don’t worry. It’s not been too earnest around here. It’s cupcake season after all. These little cuties were for T’s 3rd birthday party.

For everyday baking I usually try and reduce sugar and mess around with stuff, but when it comes to party cake I like to keep it classic.  I always seem to go back to the basic recipe my mum used to make me as a kid. It’s from the Dairy Cookbook (if such a thing even still exists) and I believe it’s otherwise known as ‘pound cake’. Basically 50g butter  / 50g sugar / 50g self raising flour to each egg (multiply up the quantities to get the amount you want). For the chocolate version also add 25g cocoa per egg, and a splash of milk.

The method is a basic creaming together of the butter and sugar until light and fluffy then adding the eggs one at a time sieving flour in over the eggs and beating in as much air as possible.

Pink icing is made by pushing defrosted frozen raspberries through a sieve (always a popular job) and mixing the juice with icing sugar.

Chocolate icing is an ever evolving experiment in this house. I think this batch involved melted milk chocolate, a little yogurt and icing sugar.

Oh, and those are smarties not pebbles. Just saying.