Mummy, can we make cupcakes?

The cry of my three year old just as I'd put tea in the oven on Wednesday evening. Baking has taken a bit of a back seat over the past few weeks as my daughter has become increasingly mobile and less sleepy, so I sad yes, of course we could make cupcakes.

We didn't have any terribly exciting ingredients in the cupboard, and as dinner was in the oven I didn't want to go to the shops, so I had a hunt through the cupboard and pulled out the selection of food colouring tubes. We had the option of red, yellow, blue, pink or black. My son went for black, which I vetoed as no one wants to eat grey cake. He had another look and went for red.

As this was just a quick bake we went for a basic one egg cake mixture (50 g margarine, 50 g caster sugar, 1 egg, 50 g self raising flour, all mixed together and cooked at 180 °C for about 20 minutes), with a big squirt of red food colouring. My son was delighted as he saw the mixture turn red, "Yay, it's going red, I love red." Then thought for a moment and said "Mummy, it's not red, it's pink." He looked thoughtful and finished with "It's ok, I love pink!" Mixture made, we selected pink cases to match the mixture.

While the cakes were in oven we made some basic icing (just icing sugar and a splash of boiling water, with more red/pink food colouring). Unfortunately my hand slipped with water, so I had to scoop loads out, then add more icing sugar, but we got there in the end. The cakes were finished with cute rice paper decorations from my friend Fluffy Owl. We only had three of the rice paper decorations, so we added glitter to the other two cakes. Perfect for pudding.