Gorgeous Little Butterfly Cakes or Fairy Cakes!

Ingredients

CAKES

• 4 ounces butter or margarine, softened
• 4 ounces caster sugar
• 4 ounces self raising flour
• 2 medium free range eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence

BUTTER ICING

• 2 ounces butter, softened
• 4 ounces sieved icing sugar

FLAVOURINGS

• vanilla essence
• lemon rind
• almond essence
• orange rind
• rose essence

TOPPINGS

• icing sugar
• colored crystal sugar
• crystallised rose petals
• lavender flowers

Directions

1. 1

   Preheat oven to 190° C or 375°F.

2. 2

   Have ready between 12 -18 paper cases depending on size. Small pie or cake tins will take standard paper cases. These cakes SHOULD be small and dainty and NOT standard "muffin" size. (However, you can make them bigger and adjust the cooking time by 5 minutes.).

3. 3

   Cream butter or margarine with sugar until light, fluffy and pale in colour. By hand is best but a hand whisk is fine too!

4. 4

   Beat the eggs and add them bit by bit with spoons of sifted flour. Bit by bit ensures the mixture does not curdle.

5. 5

   Gently fold in an any flour left over when the egg is used up.

6. 6

   Add the vanilla or any other flavourings desired - lemon and orange is good too! If the mixture is a little too stiff add a little milk or juice of orange/lemon.

7. 7

   Half fill the paper cases with the mixture and bake for about 15 minutes until risen and firm but NOT too dark.

8. 8

   Cool cakes and then cut a slice from the top of each cake and cut this in half.

9. 9

   Place a little butter icing of your choice on the top of each cake and arrange the "wings" around the icing - round edge facing the outside and the cut edge to the inside and angled towards the bottom - like BUTTERFLY or FAIRY wings! Dust with extra icing sugar and watch them fly away!

10. 10

    If you want to add colouring to the vanilla cakes, pink is really good with pink icing too! I once sprinkled on crystallised rose petals for a Christening Party & I also used rose essence in the butter icing, very sophisticated!

11. 11

    N.B. You can multiply this recipe very easily, e.g: 6 ozs of butter, flour & sugar to 3 eggs; 8 ozs of butter, flour and sugar to 4 eggs & so on! It also makes VERY good big Victoria Sponge cakes - just slice and fill with a filling of your choice -- lemon curd, butter icing, fresh whipped cream & jam -- the list is endless!