Made for the Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity: The Big Hour Cake Sale. These mini cupcakes (opens in new tab) are packed full of different fruits and veg and are iced with a delicious cream cheese frosting in a rainbow of colours. They're perfect for the kids.
Ingredients
Note: you can make 80-90 mini fairy cakes or 36 reg fairy cakes with this recipe.
For the sponge:
- 350g self-raising flour
- 1tsp baking powder
- 2tsp ground cinnamon
- ½tsp salt
- 1tsp ground ginger
- 80ml whole milk
- 120ml sunflower oil
- 230g light muscovado sugar
- 3 large eggs, lightly beaten
- 300g prepared fruit or vegetables. Choose from blueberries, courgette (roughly grated and excess moisture removed), apple (skinned, cored and grated), parsnip (peeled and grated), carrot (peeled and grated) or banana (roughly chopped)
For the buttercream:
- 240g icing sugar, sifted
- 500g cream cheese
- juice of up to 1½ lemons
- natural liquid food colours: blue, green, yellow, pink, red
WEIGHT CONVERTER
Method
- For the sponge:
- Preheat the oven to 170°C//340°F/Gas Mark 3½. Line as many small-hole baking trays as you have with paper cases. Or line three fairy cake trays with fairy cake cases.
- Sift together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and ginger.
- In a large bowl, beat together the milk, oil, sugar and eggs.
- Prepare your chosen vegetables or fruit. Make sure they are very well dried to avoid soggy cakes!
- Beat the flour mixture into the wet ingredients, taking care not to over-mix, then fold in the vegetables or fruit.
- Spoon into the cases and bake for eight to 10 mins, or until they spring back to the touch. You may need to bake them in batches. Cool on a wire rack. If you are making fairy cakes, they need to be baked for 15–20 mins.
- Beat the icing sugar into the cream cheese. Gradually add the lemon juice, to taste, then divide into six little bowls.
- Colour each bowl a different colour of the rainbow, mixing the food colours to achieve the orange and purple tones.
- Divide the little cakes into six equal groups. Spread the frosting on to the cakes with a small blunt knife. You will have at least 12 of each colour.
- To display the cakes arrange them in a rainbow shape in colours.
Top Tip for making Fiona Cairns' fruit and vegetable mini cupcakes
These cakes need to be iced on the day they are to be eaten, though the un-iced cakes freeze well, if you need to get ahead.
You might also like…
Easy cupcake recipe (opens in new tab)
Trusted, informative, and empathetic – GoodTo is the ultimate online destination for mums. Established in 2007, our 15-year-strong archive of content includes more than 18,000 articles, 1,500 how-to videos, and 7,000 recipes.
-
Butterfly buns
Our easy butterfly buns recipe is perfect for kids. We've kept our butterfly cake recipe simple - just slice the tops off and fill with buttercream and jam...
By Jessica Dady • Published
-
Oreo cupcakes
By Jessica Dady • Published
-
Mary Berry's iced fairy cakes
Make perfectly soft, sweet fairy cakes every time with Mary Berry's iced fairy cakes recipe. Ready in just 30 minutes, this recipe makes 12 fairy cakes...
By Mary Berry • Last updated
-
BBQ chicken baguettes
BBQ chicken baguettes are sandwiches but loaded up with all sorts of good things, making them a really filling meal. With chicken fillets, Mediterranean vegetables cheese and a spicy sauce, they're more like a pizza dinner than your average sarnie.
By Octavia Lillywhite • Published
-
Mushroom, bacon and pea risotto
Mushroom, bacon and pea risotto is a great dish if you're stuck with leftovers in the fridge, and it's the perfect alternative to a Carbonara or bacon and mushroom pasta
By Octavia Lillywhite • Published
-
Courgette and bacon risotto
Courgette and bacon risotto is a brilliant summer risotto - bursting with flavour but cheap, quick and easy to make.
By Octavia Lillywhite • Published