Les Petits Chefs make Jamie Oliver’s tea party fairy cakes for St Valentine’s Day

It’s not often the Petits Chefs get to make sweet treats “just because” but I felt that this week, I owed it to their mums to show them how to make awesome cupcakes from scratch, in the hopes that some of the boys might use our day off tomorrow to whip up a batch as a Valentine for their mums 😉  Normally it irks me no end when people talk about “cooking with kids” and all they are referring to is baking. Specifically, cupcakes, quick breads and cake. Because kids can do so much more than those types of recipes. But there is a place for teaching sweet treats from scratch and the impetus for this came from wanting to show the boys how easy it is to make delicious cupcakes that don’t come out of a box. In under an hour from start to tummies finish. I chose Jamie Oliver’s “Tea Party Fairy Cakes” mostly because I loved the name but also because I was curious to try the glaze, made of just strawberries and icing sugar.

We started out making sure to read the recipe all the way through. So. Important. (and something I still need to remind myself to do from time to time!). The we weighed, measured, mixed…

Cracked some eggs (no shell even fell in the mixture!)

Sifted some flour and wondered why we don’t call a sieve a “sift”…

We carefully prepared our cupcake tins…

And got to the fun part – filling them!

Miss Carter and I showed the boys how it’s a good idea to make sure each pan has a little mixture in it and then go back and add more, a little bit at a time, to ensure even distribution of the mixture (and even baking!).

While the cakes were baking away, we got to the strawberry glaze (apparently you can use other berries but we kept it simple this week).

We chopped and mashed strawberries…

Then we added in icing sugar to form a glaze, rather than a thick frosting. It was really pretty (and strikingly pink!).

The boys had a lot of fun icing the cakes (it was pretty gloopy!). Miss Carter had the wonderful idea of poking a hole in the top of each cupcake so the icing had somewhere to spread other than over the top of the cake onto little fingers 😉

It must be said that the boys had a blast making these. I’m sure you can tell this from their enthusiastic frosting endeavours!

I happen to think these are some of the sweetest looking cupcakes I have seen in a very long time…

I mean, if someone gave you one of these on St Valentine’s Day wouldn’t it totally just make your day?

And look mum(s) – not even that much mess to clean up!

If you have kids and are looking for a great tasting, easy cupcake recipe, you’ll definitely want to try Jamie Oliver’s Tea Party Fairy Cakes. Plus, it’s fun to say 😉

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