Hannah’s cupcakes

Makes 12 but the mixture only needs to fill the bottom third of each muffin case and the mixture takes up so little space in a bowl that doubling the mixture would be easy.

Ingredients

• 125g butter (softened at room temperature)
• 125g sugar (caster or granulated)
• 2 eggs beaten
• 125g self raising flour
• 2tbsp milk

Icing

• 225g icing sugar
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tbsp warm water
• Food colouring as required
• Decorations as required (sweets, chocolate buttons, hundreds and thousands, glace cherries)

Method

• Preheat fan oven to 160°C (or 190°C for regular oven). 
• Put muffin cases into a muffin tin.
• In a bowl beat sugar and butter until light and fluffy.  If doing by hand this can be quite hard work.
• Add eggs a little at a time beating well after each addition. (You could add food colouring at this point if you wanted a coloured sponge)
• Add flour and fold in carefully.
• Mix in milk and stir until mixture is smooth and drops off spoon easily.
• Spoon mixture into cases and bake fro 15-20 mins until cakes are risen and golden brown.
• While cakes are cooking make the icing by adding all of the icing ingredients to a bowl and mix until thick and smooth.
• When cakes are cooked put them on a cooling rack.
• Spoon icing onto cakes and spread to the edges with the back of a spoon.  Add decorations as required.