- 125g of soft margarine. Flora works but St Ivel Gold doesn't.
- 125g of caster sugar if you have it, or other sugar if you don't, because that's nice too.
- 125g of self-raising flour
- 125g of raisins or currants, which are the same thing with a different name, I think.
- Baking powder is not important, but you can use it if you want to show off.
- 2 large eggs is quite important, but if you have powdered egg then that's OK as well.
- Vanilla extract is not at all important, but if you have any, it does smell quite nice.
- 250g of Icing sugar is essential if you want to make little cakes with icing. If you just want to make little cakes without icing, then this can be ignored.
- Nice things to put on the icing like hundreds and thousands or glacé cherries are also very recommended. Those nice jelly diamonds that come in different colours and have sugar on them are fantastic but the supermarket at the end of my road didn't have any, which was a shame.
- Funny little frilly cake bottom cases made from paper are in every sense required. You'll probably find these at the back of your cupboard if you look hard enough.
- You will need water, perhaps from a tap, if only to wash up with.
Things to do:
1. Find the oven and turn it on. 190C or 375F is an excellent position, just a notch down from when you cook pizza. You don't need to put anything in the oven at the moment, although do make sure that it contains no clothes, newspapers, or small pets. Just let the oven warm up while you're doing the other stuff. It's also a good time to wash your hands, if you haven't done that already.
2. A decent sized bowl is where you should be putting in the sugar and the margarine. 125g is exactly half of a small Flora tub, so is easy to measure. In my case, I found the Flora was three months past the expiry date, but don't worry, it comes out just fine.
3. Let's have the flour in there too, and the eggs. Fresh eggs are fine - without the shells, of course - but if you have none (like I didn't) then you might find some powdered eggs in a cupboard somewhere (like I did). In that case you want about 25g of powdered egg and 5 fluid ounces of water. Don't worry, it's marked on the side of most plastic jugs.
4. Show offs can add a TEASPOON (that's the very small one) of baking powder here. I didn't have any, so I didn't do this, and my cakes came out just fine. This is also the time to put some vanilla extract in. I forgot this entirely, so added it to the icing later, but it made no difference. My vanilla essence was also 4 years past the sell-buy date, vanilla essence being the kind of thing that sits in the back of the cupboard for years, unused, until you finally lose your mind and want to make fairy cakes at half past eight on a Wednesday evening.
5. You need to just mix all this stuff up now. Keep mixing until it looks done - you'll know when it is. Your margarine may have turned into small lumps which are not easy to remove, but these will melt when you cook this stuff so don't worry about that.
6. Oh! Oh! You forgot the raisins. It's OK. Put these in now and keep mixing.
7. OK, time for those frilly paper cake cases. If you have one of those tins with the dips in, then that is just made for this job. Put one case in each dip. If you don't have one of those tins, like I didn't, then try just putting the cases on a tray or something flat but with sides. Your cakes won't be perfect and round if you do it this way, but that's OK.
8. If you've chosen the "no showing off" option and haven't used any baking powder then you'll need two teaspoons of cake mix in each frilly cake bottom thing. If you have used baking powder then you might remember from school that even though one teaspoon of cake mix doesn't look like nearly enough, it really really is. Not showing off makes less cakes, but that's alright because you probably don't have nearly enough tins to get them all in the oven at once.
9. Into the oven please, which should be warm enough by now. Take them out in 20 minutes and not before.
10. In the meantime, it's a good time to work on the icing. 250g of icing sugar goes into another bowl, or that measuring jug if you don't have anything else handy. 250g is a lot and looks like far more than you need, but don't worry. Add a small amount of water - really, add much less than you think you need - and start stirring. You'll have real icing very quickly. If, like me, you've added too much water then your icing is now too runny and you will need to add more sugar.
11. This only takes a minute so you find yourself at a loose end for the next 15 minutes or so. You might be tempted to get a bit arty by sprinkling some hundreds and thousands straight into the icing, and mixing it up. This looks nice at first but just makes your icing turn grey later.
12. Once 20 minutes have passed since you put the cakes in the oven, then congratulations, you can take them out now. They are, of course, all far too hot to do anything with and if you even try to put the icing on them it will fall straight off so DON'T. Put the cakes somewhere safe, such as on a well-ventilated window ledge where passing sparrows and pointy birds may gaze at your wares accordingly. The proper term for this procedure is "leave to one side to cool".
13. Once cooling is completed (you probably won't wait long enough, but try to wait at least 15 minutes) you can have at it with the icing. If you've not shown off with the baking powder then your cakes are probably still well under the rim of the frilly cake things, so applying your icing on top is easy - just spoon it in and let it slosh around inside the case. If you didn't have a proper fairy cake tin for the oven, then half of your cakes are probably now in really weird shapes. Choose to find this charming. And if you couldn't resist the baking powder, or you really just put far too much cake mix in each one and your cakes are over the top of the cases, then you really need to make sure your icing is thick. Be careful not to get it everywhere.
14. Cakes iced? Good! Scatter hundreds and thousands all over the kitchen. There's a good chance that enough of these will land on your cakes so as to look pleasing. If you have any glacé cherries then you can stick half of one on each cake. It's quite pretty.
15. Congratulations, you are Gary Rhodes. Now eat the cakes, but not all at once.
