Madhouse Family Reviews: Baking with the Kids : Colourful Iced Cupcakes

I love the Kids' Baking section of the Baking Mad website and frequently have a quick look through for inspiration for things to make with the Madhouse Mini-testers on a rainy afternoon. They always have lots of recipes using just store cupboard basics, as well as simplified version of classic kid-friendly treats. Having won two rather fab baking hampers just before Christmas, I have a rather well stocked baking cupboard at the moment so I had a look to see what we could make.

The Madhouse Mini-testers are particularly excited by the large selection of cake decorations that we received - we have chocolate letters, silver balls, flavoured chocolate drops, flavoured icing sugar, ready-to-roll icing ... The possibilities are endless !

I decided to use a basic recipe for Vanilla Cupcakes (why does nobody call them Fairy Cakes any more ?!). You can see the original recipe, named Birthday Cupcakes, on the Baking Mad website.

Ingredients :

150g Butter at room temperature

150g Golden Caster Sugar

3 Free Range Eggs, beaten

150g Self Raising White Flour

1/2 tsp Baking Powder

grated zest 1 lemon (or orange )

Vanilla Extract

I'll be able to put my feet up in front of the telly and let them make the cakes all by themselves soon - they have even got to grips with the weighing of the ingredients now !

Pierre always loves being chief mixer !

Ready to go in the oven.

Twelve minutes later, they're nicely browned, albeit slightly misshapen. Ah well, you can't aim for perfection when the kids are involved !

While the cakes were cooling, all three Madhouse Mini-testers got hands on with the "edible play-doh" which is what they call the ready-to-roll icing.