Remember my post last week when I showed you some little fancy-pants cakes that I'd baked for my solo knit-and-natter at home? I had lots of requests for the pattern recipe (sorry, I've just been pootling about on Ravelry and my mind is on crochet patterns, although I do quite like the thought of a baking pattern!), ho hum, I've distracted myself now, where was I?? Oh yes, lots of requests for the recipe for these little winged cakes.
Not sure what to call them, J and I had a little debate about this last week actually. He tells me that in The North they are called angel cakes. And I then told him that in The South, we always called them butterfly cakes. And then to confuse things even more, my little baking recipe booklet refers to them as fairy cakes. So either way, whether you like your cakey wings to belong to fairies, angels or butterflies, the recipe is one and the same.
First you make a batch of little buns. I have an old faithful recipe which I always use, you can find it waaaaay back in my archives (March 2008, good lord, have I been gas bagging on here THAT long?)...click HERE to find it. This recipe makes eight cakes.
You need to let the cakes cool completely before you start
chopping them about or else it all goes hideously wrong so be patient
ok? No crumbly disasters and no kitchen hissy fits.
So while you're waiting for the cakelets to cool, you can make your buttercream icing. Very easy thing to do :: into a bowl put 50g butter or margarine and 100g icing sugar.
Get jiggy with your spoon of choice and cream them together until lovely and smooth. If you're using butter and it's not very soft, cream it first before adding in the sugar.
Beat in a few drops of vanilla essence.
Now you need to get your little cakey to produce some wings. Take a sharp pointy knife and cut out a circle from the top of the cake. Put your knife in at an angle as you cut round so that you end up cutting out a shallowish disc shape rather than trying to gouge out a deep round hole, does this make sense??
Don't worry if it's not particularly neat, a rough circle shape will do fine.
Now cut your circle in half to form the two wings, then fill in the hole with a good dollop of buttercream icing.
Arrange your little wings on top of the icing with the straight sides pointing down and the roundy edges sticking up (took me an embarrassingly long time to get this right, I kept wanting to put the wings in upsidedown)
And the final touch (which I completely adore) is to dust lightly with some icing sugar. Ahhhhhhhh it is such a huge amount of fun to dust cakes!! They look so charming and pretty and so much more cakey when they've had a good dusting down!
And thats pretty much it, this recipe should provide you with some fun baking and some even more fun eating. They are just the right amount of sweetness.
My Little People love these cakes. Mind you, they are quite cruel to the angels/fairies/butterflies and pull their wings clean off before scooping out the icing with their Little Fingers. Then they wipe their sticky Little Fingers all down their clothes, the dirty little urchins. I hope you won't do that, these pretty little cakies do deserve to be eaten daintily me thinks.
ps I do love the Silver Spoon icing sugar packet, don't you? The dinky little red tractor with it's union jack window, ploughing up sugar pink fields is very sweet indeed.
Edited to add ::: ooooooooommmmmmmmmm JAM under the buttercream you say????? Well I never, I am SO going to try this, the Little Peeps will be beside themselves :o)xx
Also am rather delighted that I shall need to put J straight on the butterfly/angel debate as these are clearly Butterfly cakes aren't they? I was right, wasn't I?? teehee! xx