Simple Cakes: Mary Berry (E)

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And while cupcakes normally have a bit swirl of butter icing on top, fairy cakes are traditionally decorated with some plain icing and a few sprinkles. Preheat the oven to 140°C/Fan 120°C/Gas 1. Grease a 20cm (8in) deep round cake tin, then line the base and sides with a double layer of baking paper. Loosen the edges, then set aside to cool in the tin. When cold, take out of the tin and leave to chill in the fridge. Using a teaspoon, get your kids to spread some icing over the top of each fairy cake, then add some sprinkles on top. Measure the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and sugar into a bowl and mix well.

Cutting down your meat intake or going full veggie? Look no further than the chapter dedicated to vegetable-based mains, which includes hero dishes like Roasted Vegetable Wellington and Wild Mushroom Pasta Bake. To make adding sprinkles a little less messy, I find it helps to pour some into a small bowl first. When cool, pierce the cake at intervals with a fine skewer and feed with a little brandy. Wrap the completely cold cake in a double layer of baking paper, and again in foil, and store in a cool place, feeding at intervals with more brandy. Don’t remove the lining paper when storing as this helps to keep the cake moist. Cover the cake with almond paste or marzipan about a week before icing. Put large spoonfuls of both cake mixtures in the tin, then swirl the two together with a skewer to create a marbled effect.Begin this cake the night before you want to bake it. Place the cherries in a sieve and rinse under running water. Drain well then dry thoroughly on kitchen paper. Measure all the fruits and chopped peel into a large bowl. Mix in the brandy, cover and leave in a cool place overnight. Place one cake on a cake stand and spread a third of the icing over the top. Place the second cake on top. Spread the remaining icing over the sides and top of the cake. Sprinkle with the chopped fudge. With plenty of new festive bakes and desserts to try, Mary Makes it Easy is the perfect cookbook to add to your collection in time for Christmas. Think Celebration Trifle, Bûche de Noël and Very Berry Christmas Fruit Cake. The best part of this bake for my kids was getting to decorate them. If you have very young children, they’ll enjoy getting to do this even if they don’t make the fairy cakes themselves. There’s no need to pipe anything on to the little cakes. Spooning on the icing makes it a really simple job even very young children will enjoy. These simple fairy cakes will keep in an airtight container for a few days. If you want to make them in advance or keep them a little bit longer, you can freeze them before you’ve added the icing. Simply wrap them well or pop them in a freezer bag and they’ll keep in the freezer for a few months. Defrost them fully before adding the icing. Can I ammend the quantities?

Served with tea and an old, crumbly cheese like Lancashire or English cheddar for a sweet-savory taste. Start with the butter. Using a blunt knife, chop the butter into small pieces to make it easier to mix. If it’s not soft (we always forget to take it out the fridge), pop it in the microwave for a few seconds, but not long enough to melt it. If you’re using baking spread or margarine you can add it straight in. Fairy cakes rather than cupcakes were the bake of my childhood, although both are delicious in their own ways. Don’t forget to put the pastry in the fridge before you bake it so that it keeps its shape and texture. Who is the author: Food writer, TV regular, and queen of baking, Mary Berry has been teaching the nation to cook for decades and is one of the UK’s most prolific cookbook authors.Baking spread, (things like Stork), is just a non dairy margarine that’s perfect for baking. It makes cupcakes and cakes lighter and fluffier than butter, which means it’s a great, cheaper alternative. How long do these fairy cakes keep? Gently flatten the cakes with the sealed edges on the bottom and the smooth surface on top. Don’t press too hard. Cut three parallel dough incisions with a sharp knife. To make the icing, measure the icing sugar and lemon and lime juice into a bowl. Whisk until smooth, then spread the icing over the cake. Return to the oven for a final 10 minutes, until the cheesecake is just set with a slight wobble in the middle. Measure the baking spread, caster and light muscovado sugars, eggs, vanilla, flour, baking powder, milk, 3 tablespoons of the caramel and the salt into a large bowl. Whisk together for 2 minutes using an electric hand whisk.

To fill. Melt butter in a medium pot and add all ingredients except egg white and demerara sugar. Remove from heat and add rum. Wait 3–4 hours or overnight before using the filling. Make the filling a few days in advance. Before filling Eccles cakes, let the refrigerated filling rest for 30 minutes. If you don’t have self raising flour, swap it for an equal amount of plain or all-purpose flour and put in an extra teaspoon of baking powder. Get your kids to measure out all the ingredients and add them to a mixing bowl or freesttanding mixer. Eccles cake assembly. Roll the pastry to 1/8–1/4″ thin on a floured surface. Cut squares or rounds. The average diameter is 3.5 inches.

If you don’t have any self raising flour, use plain or all-purpse flour and add an extra ¾ tsp of baking powder. Pile the remaining icing from the bowl on top and spread it with a palette knife over the top and around the edges to completely cover the cake. Make sure that the icing is smooth around the edges before starting to create lines up the sides. Make wide lines up the sides and swirl the top. If you’ve got an ice cream scoop they can sometimes dish out the perfect amount of batter, with a less mess. If you don’t have one, try soup or dessert spoons instead. Make sure they the batter is nice and evenly distributed so they bake evenly. We kept our icing white, but if you like you could add a bit of colour to your icing or separate the icing into different bowls and do more than one colour. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Grease two 20cm/8in sandwich tins and line the bases with baking paper.