Fairy cakes

[wahwahwah]

Ok so I need to make a million of the buggers for Children in Need (volunteered).

Now I havent made a fairy cake for yonks (having 'gone muffin') and the kids want to decorate these with white icing and blob food colouring dots or smarties on the top.

Is there any fail safe way of making them with relatively flat tops?

not really in my experience,all depends on weather,temperature ect

if you get high tops then just slice them off with a sharp knife,if the kids are icing them then you won't see that you have flattened them

watches to wait & see if anyone does actually have a fail safe

Don't put too much mixture in the cases to start with. Domed tops are usually caused by either too much raising agent or baking on too high a shelf in the oven. Failing this. do as Thehusband says and slice off the tops.Hope they go ok.

I am now volunteered to do spotty cookies too. Do smarties explode/split/melt if you try to cook them?

They'll go a bit dodgy! Best to put them on last. Wrt high tops, if you fill the cases only 2/3rds of the way and make sure the mixture is even that'll help you out but there isn't really a fail safe I'm afraid!

Ok so I tried them with the smarties on first (the recipe said to!). Not good. The colour really disppears! And the bloody things are quite flat - like pancakes. Not sure what happened there. I followed the recipe but the dough was sticky. I assume that if they tast ok, it won't matter if they are a bit thin...

Fairy caked came out ok though. Another new recipe which uses same amounts of sugar, flour and fat, which seems a bit odd to me...

Glacé cherries, jelly tots or "oranges and lemons" sugared jellies are good in cookies as they don't melt, and keep their colour. I usually use the recipe for cupcakes with 100g flour/sugar/marg and 2 eggs, half a teaspoon of baking powder. A layer of foil or grease proof over the cakes will keep them from rising too much.

You've made me want to make fairy cakes now
I don't know if it's the dairy free marg I used, but my fairy cakes are barely making it over the top of the paper cases

So I used that bloody food colour gel to put dotty spots on the top. It looks very very pretty (like coloured glass beads) but the bloody things are still sticky - 3 hours later!

Inmysparetime - try alternating between the flour and eggs as you are adding them - 1/3 flour, 1 egg, 1/3 flour, 1 egg, last 3rd flour. Don't know why but it seems to have solved all the baking problems I was having before! They rise beautifully now.

Thats how I do them - I thought that's how everyone did them! Icing has still not set and is liquid. Dont use the Gel if you want it to dry!

Some recipe books say to just bung it all in (I think Delia does the 4,4,4,2 recipe with everything bunged in at once) which is what I was doing until I got my Primrose Bakery cookbook (check it out, best cupcake book I own!)
Oh no! Can you try freezing it for a few mins just to help it along a little?