Fairy Cakes

I cheated and used red velvet cake mix for half of these ^

Easy and delicious! Great for baking with kids.

Prep time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

100g self-raising flour
100g butter, softened
100g caster sugar
2 small eggs
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla essence

Butter cream:

100g butter
300g icing sugar

Method:

1) Preheat oven to 180C. Sift flour and baking powder into mixing bowl. Add softened butter (stick cubes into microwave for twenty-forty seconds - careful not to melt!), sugar, eggs and vanilla essence, and mix with wooden spoon until all gooey and smooth. Try not to eat.

2) Spoon into paper cases in tin. Fits twelve. Place in oven on middle rack for fifteen-twenty minutes or until golden brown and cooked through. Check with toothpick. Let cool before icing.

3) Make butter cream while kitchen fills with aroma of freshly baked treats. Mix butter and icing sugar until smooth and creamy. Use piping bag to load up cooled fairy cakes with sugary goodness.

Peach Cobbler

I watch way too much American television, so of course I've heard about this amazing desert called Peach Cobbler again and again, and last month I got to making it. I used this recipe from user aeposey on my favourite recipe site (do check out the site - it has such a gorgeous variety and loads of helpful tips in the comments!)

As it was the first time I made this recipe, I found shoes58's comments really helpful on how to peel peaches: soak in boiling water for one minute, plunge in cold water and peel off with fingers.

However when removing the peach from the seed it did break apart. I chucked it in the dish as was, not bothering to slice it up, which actually added to the fruity part of the desert. I also used five large peaches instead of eight.

As for the mixture, it may seem like it is not enough but if you drop it spaced out it expands to cover the entire dish. A lot of comments mentioned that the dish was quite sweet, but being British our peaches are not as sweet as American peaches, so I would recommend you stick with the recipes original sugar suggestions unless you prefer less sweet dishes.

I also kept a few cubes of butter out of the batter/topping mixture and stuck them on top of the mix when I placed the dish in the oven a second time, which worked really well - there was no overwhelming taste of butter.

And definitely use butter not margarine!