Halloween fairy cakes recipe

Spider’s webs, monsters, and vampires – make these Halloween fairy cakes as scary as you dare using writing icing and sweets.

These Halloween fairy cakes are the ideal easy baking recipe for kids. Let them have fun this Halloween with ready-to-use icing, writing icing, mini marshmallows, and more. Get creative with your designs, from spooky spiders to ghoulish ghosts and maybe even some gruesome details with lots of red food colouring. This recipe makes 12 Halloween fairy cakes.

Ingredients

• 110g (4oz) butter or margarine, softened
• 110g (4oz) caster sugar
• 2 medium eggs
• 110g (4oz) self-raising flour, sifted
• 15g cocoa powder
• 2-3 drops of vanilla extract

For the decoration:

• Fairy cake icing in white and yellow (eg. Dr. Oetker Ready to Use Fairy Cake Icing)
• Writing icing in various colours (we used black, red and green)
• Mini marshmallows
• Chocolate stars

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4. Place 12 cake cases into a 12-hole fairy cake baking tray.
2. In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Gradually beat in the eggs and the vanilla extract. If the mixture starts to curdle, add a little flour.
4. Fold in the remaining flour and cocoa powder with a large metal spoon.
5. Place spoonfuls of the mixture into the baking cases and bake in the preheated oven for 10-15 mins until well risen and firm to the touch. Remove the fairy cakes from the oven and leave to cool on a cooling rack.
6. For the decoration: Choose your desired colour of fairy cake icing, massage the pouch for 1 min to loosen the icing, then snip the corner off the pouch and pour a small amount of icing over each cake. Using a knife, spread the icing thickly over the fairy cakes.
7. Decorate the cakes using the writing icing and sprinkles to make scary faces. Make them as scary as you dare.

Top tips for making Halloween fairy cakes

Use a metal spoon rather than a wooden spoon (which retains moisture) to mix cake ingredients together at the end. Cut and fold the mixture with your metal spoon to keep the air in your mixture. Never beat at this stage.

Why are my fairy cakes not rising?

This would usually be due to a lack of raising agent, but in this recipe we use self raising flour. If your cakes are still not rising properly, check the best before date on your flour. While flour doesn't go off, if it's old or has been badly stored (too warm or cold a place), the raising agent can stop working well. No need to bin the flour, just add some baking powder to it then next time you use it.

Why are my fairy cakes sticky?

If the cakes are sticking excessively to the cases as you remove them, it could be that you cooled them in the tin, causing them to retain too much moisture. As soon as you take them out of the oven, transfer them from the muffin tray to a cooling rack.

You might also like...

• Halloween cupcake recipes
• Halloween recipes
• Mary Berry’s fairy cakes