Cupcake Fun

”I’m having a sleepover with three of my friends in our house this Saturday and we are going to make cupcakes,” announced my 9-year-old daughter last week. “Here is a shopping list for you!” 

And she had not only made a shopping list, but written invitations to her friends and a schedule what they would do, hour by hour, including having Chinese food for dinner, going to the front yard and have a race, eating non-butter popcorn while watching a movie and going to bed at 1 a.m. The bedtime was the only thing I had to disagree with her. Baking with the girls would be great fun and I was looking forward to seeing their creations.

So shopping I went, after checking what we already had in the kitchen cupboards. It was not easy to find coloured cupcake cases  as Easter was gone and Christmas stuff would not arrive to the shops until in a few weeks or so… Nor was I sure what fondant icing would be as I had never used it before, but I did find it (fondant icing is a ready-made block of icing; it is easy to roll, shape and you can colour it if you like), and got cute coloured paper cupcake cases, too!  

Before the girls arrived I made the dough ready. This is a very basic recipe and enough to make 36 small(ish) cupcakes.

Dough:

300g butter

3 dl / 1 ¼ cup granulated sugar

5 eggs

5dl / 2 cups self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla sugar

(2 tbsp dark cocoa powder)

1. Beat the butter and sugar until fluffy.

2. Add the eggs one at a time.

3. Mix the flour, baking powder and vanilla sugar and fold into the butter-sugar-egg mix.

At this point I divided the dough into two bowls and added 2 tbsp of cocoa powder into the other half.

The eager little bakers filled the cupcake cases - half full as I instructed them to do. Then my job was to bake the cupcakes in the oven at 175°C / 350°F for about 10-15 minutes. 

While the girls were cooling down in the front yard I was waiting for the cupcakes to cool, making some icing and putting things ready for the girls to let them prove their creativity as pastry chefs. 

Icing:

50 g soft butter

3 dl / 1 ¼ cup icing sugar

A few drops of food colouring 

Beat the butter and add the icing sugar gradually. The paste should be smooth and firm, especially if you like to pipe the icing on your cupcakes. Add some water or milk if the icing is too stiff. 

I divided the icing into two bowls colouring the first half of the icing yellow and the rest green.

For decorating we had:

Home-made icing

Fondant icing

Writing icing

Sprinkles

Mini marshmallows

Some odd candies my daughter found from her ‘safe’ (leftovers from her Friday candies)

When everything was ready I called the girls in so they could start making a mess decorating the cupcakes. The little brother wanted to join the team as a sous-chef and to my surprise he was welcomed to do so!

I gave the kids free rein to create their cupcakes as they liked. I helped them with filling in the piper with icing and checked every now and then that they were sharing the two rolling pins we had and not using a whole jar of sprinkles on one cupcake… Otherwise the bakery was fully theirs:

One of my daughter’s favourite food programs is Ace of Cakes and she had learned from there how to make a rose of fondant icing. After making one, her first one ever, she was teaching her friends how to make roses, too.

This one my daughter made from ‘milk teeth’ candies and the tongue is made of fondant icing with some red writing icing on it. Great idea for Halloween!

The little brother could maybe borrow the teeth from the cupcake in the picture above while waiting for his own teeth to  grow… These  cupcakes were his creations which he was very proud of:

As you could see from the pictures, there was icing sugar all over the place and sprinkles everywhere you could think of from the kids’ ears to the cat’s tail, and I found a few little stains of green food colouring on the carpet but the kids had great FUN and so did I!! - And the cupcakes turned out just gorgeous:

After the cupcakes were all ready and set up on the (very shaky) cupcake stand the girls sat at the table and enjoyed some of their precious creations with tea. I packed the remaining cupcakes for the guests to take home the following morning and we all said good night after an absolutely great evening, brushed our teeth (the inedible ones) and went to bed.

***

What comes to the bedtime, the lights were switched off around midnight and the girls were nicely curled up in their sleeping bags in the living room. Yesterday morning my daughter told me that they had been up till 2:35 a.m. but I couldn’t hear a sound from downstairs (at least nothing overpowering my husband’s snoring) so cannot be sure. Last night my daughter did sleep for 13½ hours – how lucky I am she is that it is a bank holiday Monday with no school today so she was able to do so.