These animal fairy cakes are ideal for children’s birthday parties and are one of our favourite easy baking recipes for kids.
We’ve made these animal fairy cakes using muffin cases so they are a little larger than the average fairy cake – this will give more space for the sweet decorations. Make sure you have a good selection of sweets to create the animal faces such as Maltesers, chocolate buttons, marshmallows, strawberry laces, Smarties, and licorice allsorts.
Ingredients
225g butter, softened
225g caster sugar
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
1tsp vanilla extract
225g self-raising flour
2tbsp milk
For the decoration:
175g icing sugar, sifted
2tbsp warm water
Yellow, pink, brown and orange food colouring pastes
150g ready-to-roll fondant
A selection of sweets
WEIGHT CONVERTER
to
Method
Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Fan 160°C/Gas Mark 4. Line a 12-hole and a 6-hole muffin tray with 18 paper or silver foil muffin cases.
Place the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl and beat together until very pale and fluffy. Gradually beat in the eggs, a spoonful at a time. Beat well after each addition and if the mixture begins to curdle add a spoonful of the measured flour.
Beat in the vanilla extract then sift over the flour and fold in gently with a metal spoon. Fold in enough of the milk to give a soft dropping consistency. Divide the mixture between the paper cases. Bake for 20-25mins until risen, golden and springy to the touch.
Leave the fairy cakes in the tray for about 5mins then transfer to a cooling rack and leave to cool completely.
For the decoration, mix the icing sugar with enough of the warm water to make a smooth glace icing. Using the colouring pastes, colour one-quarter of the icing yellow, one-quarter orange, one-quarter pink and leave the last quarter white. Use to ice 12 of the cakes.
Divide the fondant into two and colour half pale brown and half cream coloured. Roll out on a surface dusted with icing sugar and stamp out 6 rounds to top the rest of the fairy cakes. Decorate the cakes with sweets to resemble animal faces (using the picture above as a guide).
Top tips for making animal fairy cakes
To give as a party favour, place each fairy cake in a cellophane gift bag and tie it with a curling ribbon.
To attach the sweet decorations to the fondant iced cakes use a little of the white glace icing as ‘glue’. This will help to keep them in place as it will harden and set after about half-hour or so.
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