Our Children In Need Baking Challenge #1 : Pudsey-fly Cakes

For the past few days, I've been trying to come up with a Pudsey-themed sweet treat to send over to Baking Mad for their Children in Need challenge. Just like last year, when we knocked up a very cute Pudsey Banana Cake,  they're supporting the charity and offered to make a £10 donation on my behalf if I sent them through a recipe. Well, how could I turn down an offer like that ? Today, we spent a fun afternoon in the kitchen and came up with not one but two Pudsey-themed recipes.

First of all, we made a twist on classic Butterfly Cakes to make Pudsey-fly Cakes ! Very cute, even if I say so myself !

Here's the recipe (basically a very simple recipe for fairy cakes - it's all in the decorating !)

Ingredients :

125g softened butter or margarine

125g caster sugar

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 tsp vanilla extract

125g self-raising flour

2 tbsp milk

I'm sure you all know how to make fairy cakes but just in case, cream together the butter and sugar, mix in the beaten eggs, then the flour, vanilla extract and milk. Whisk until well mixed and lump free, pour into bun tins (we used silicon muffin tins) and bake in the oven at 190°C for 10-12 minutes until golden brown.

Remove from the tin and allow to cool.

As you would for making Butterfly Cakes, cut the top rounded part off and cut in half to make two ears.

Roll out some ready-to-roll white icing and cut out bandage shapes. Use icing tubes (we used Dr Oetker glitter icing but anything would do - even home-made icing from mixing lemon juice into icing sugar) to stick the ears in place then the bandage.

Even 3-year-old Pierre had a go and managed quite succesfully, with a little help !

Use the glitter icing tubes to decorate the bandages with multi-coloured spots. (We also used a mixture of Silver Spoon blue sugar balls and tiny pieces of ready-to-roll icing coloured with food colouring.)

Juliette had great fun positioning all the tiny coloured balls on the bandages !

Pierre just had fun squirting glitter icing everywhere !

The finished article - very cute if I do say so myself !

If you're not great at cooking, you could even make these using instant sponge cake mix, which is a great short-cut when cooking with toddlers. That said, they're totally simple to knock up from scratch too.

for more Pudsey-themes recipe ideas : http://www.bakingmad.com/recipes?searchText=pudsey&category=&search=1&x=0&y=0


Disclosure : For participating in the Baking Mad Children in Need bloggers' challenge, I am compensated with a £10 donation in my name to Children in Need. I am also entered into a competition to win a hamper of baking goodies.

Other blogposts you may be interested in :

Antony Worrall Thompson's Pudsey Pud recipe for Children in Need 2010

Our Pudsey Cake for Children In Need !

Silver Spoon Create Cake Decorating products review