Fairy Cakes: How to make them look presentable???

[Dotty38]

Any tips would be appreciated as I have a shiney new mixer and a party I need to make them for.

Every time I make fairy cakes they come out of the oven looking less than perfect. How do you stop them from rising into a point and how can I make them rise evenly so that when I ice them the icing doesn't all run off and down the pointy bit.

The trick is not not cook them in an oven than is too hot. Try this recipe from BBC's good food mag

use butter cream instead of icing so it doesn't run and if you make yogurt cupcakes they won't rise to a point - shall link you the recipe if you like

great cupcake thread here

the yogurt recipe is only a few posts in - has never failed me

makes 12 yougut fairy cakes

125g sunflower spread
125 caster sugar
2 medium eggs, beaten
125g pot fruit flavoured yogurt
100g self raising flour

icing is lovely for these -

100g soft cream cheese
40g icing sugar
1tssp marmalade

heat oven to 180 & line bun tin

sunflower spread, caster sugar into bowl with beaten eggs, s/r flour and HALF the yogurt - beat with electric whisk

cook for 18-20 minutes

beat ingredients for icing all together and spread on cooled cakes - decorate as desired

they truely are lovey and light and depending on which yogurt you can change the taste

Will vouch for dizzy's yogurt fairy cakes as they're a top favourite in this house now!

Otherwise, you can do the following:

1. slice off the points so you have a flat surface to ice

1. embrace the points and do as an earlier poster suggested and swirl butter icing round them to make it look deliberate.

When using glace icing I always make it really pretty thick, then that way it ain't sliding off anything .

remember to pop them in the fridge for a wee while before icing etc as this stops the crumbs coming off and mixing into the icing/buttercream

thank you misshardbroom

I cover them in melted chocolate. You can then decorate with 'stuff' if rqd. DD likes hundreds and thousands.

Also, if you get a really big star nozzle (you want to go into a cake supply shop and tell them you want one for piping frosting on fairy cakes) you can do a dramatic piped swirl like these. Which is not at all how I rescued the rather sunken cupcakes that I'd made for DD's birthday (why did my normal recipe and normal oven choose that day to conspire against me? Why?) and turned them into a thing of beauty, no, not at all.

you can look at some website for inspiration too - shall link a few for you

one here and here for supplies and these look divine now am not saying you have to produce cakes like these but they're good for getting ideas from

am bookmarking the yoghurt fairy cakes recipe for later

its great kitty, honestly every time

am making white choc and raspberry muffins tonight

Thanks everyone, will give the yogurt ones a whirl tomorrow. And I'd never heard of the fridge tip before icing or the not too hot oven. Me and my oven do have a habit of cremating things!

Port and lemon, I also have a new piping tool set (along with the mixer - was my B'day yesterday and got lucky with an ace new mixer ) so I already have a star piping top so I'll experiment with that too.

To do the butter cream icing would you make larger fairy cakes? I have a muffin tin and could use that or do you think they'd be too big in a muffin tin??

we always make ours in a muffin tin - you can never have a big enough fairy cake

and pile the buttercream up high, if you can't get teethmarks in it then you're not using enough!!

you're new equipment sounds lovely - you might want to invest in an over thermometer though if you're planning on baking more - will let you know exactly how your oven is running

Never heard of an oven thermometer, well seperate to the one on the oven dial that is. I've always relied on the on on the oven knob but I always have to turn it down about 50 degrees less than all the recipes state.

Just piling up a big shopping cart full of sprinkles etc on one of the links above. Went to the supermarket earlier to get some decorating stuff and was mightly dissapointed.

dizzy your cupcakes sounds amazing

debenhams or lakeland etc will get you an oven thermometer for

Lakeland was aleady on the agenda for Monday and Asda is now aswell.

Thanks for your tips, Mumsnet is just great.

Haven't read all posts, so sorry if repeating.

I always opt for muffin sized paper cases and my muffin tins.

Don't overfill.

They rise to just level with the case in the middle, but are more flat on the top.

I second the comment about going for butter type icing as you can sculpt nice icing and disguise any mishapes, unlike standard icing sugar and water which you have to be a real pro to master....

Good luck!

You probably don't have a big enough star tip, Dotty -- you may do, but the largest star tip in most sets is woefully inadequate for the job. The one you want looks as though it ought to be being used for some kind of agricultural purposes, possibly pig insemination, rather than for anything so delicate as fairy cakes.