Thoughts for Fairy Cakes

Before dressing up...
Originally uploaded by apricot_says

When it was just a few years after I moved here, Little Miss Chatty started to go to pre-school, and I met this lady who bakes so many small cakes beautifully. She was a mother of two girls and her younger daughter was at the same play group with my daughter. Her elder girl had just started to go to school. Saying "When children start going to school, we have to bake them very often for cake sale or something", she just taught me how to bake "Fairy cake", and how to keep them for the cake sale day in the freezer. I remember that her recipe was the same as Gordon Ramsey's, 125g of self-raising flour (or 125g plain flour and 1 and 1/2 tea spoon of baking powder will do), sugar, butter each and 2 eggs. They are easy to bake unlike sponge type cakes, and the most notably they were really yummy.

Unfortunately for United Kingdom where is the mother country of English language, in my country they are called "cupcake" as American people does, but I really love the name for this rather small cake as "Fairy cake", which reminds me of the pretty picture that little fairies share this small cake in the woods.

Cupcakes have gone cool - Times Online says that "cupcake" became fashionable and cool these days, thanks to that famous TV drama. I read this article on Saturday Times on paper and it said, some cupcake cost £12! I think this fad came from US but even my favourite French confectionery in my town had started to sell those "cupcakes", too.

They look pretty, fancy, and beautiful, but it's not too difficult to make them look smiler to those shop ones, and it cost far less. They might be nice for indulgence you can enjoy once in awhile, but I don't want Fairy cakes(cupcakes?) to be something too special or you have to buy from shops. I want them to be the cakes Mums take out from their oven every now and then. And children help them to decorate, enjoying not only decoration itself but also a little conversation, and each other's company.