Jubilee Goodies

The baking blog world has pretty much been on a sugar high from all the baking opportunities the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee has created. Street parties with a bunch of neighbours you never normally speak to bring everyone together through a love of food and partying. Our little road was no exception. My mum and I donated the baked goodies I’m writing about here, got very merry on some homemade cider and chatted absolute nonsense to neighbours we probably won’t talk to again until the next Jubilee. What a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon, Eh?

Jubilee Cupcakes

I entered these into our street party’s cupcake competition for a laugh, fully excepting to be competing against a few ten year olds. The cupcake that won was actually really impressive! They’d made a little picnic out of icing including a checked blanket and teapot. I should have known really that there would be fierce competition down a decidedly middle-class street full of housewives (and students) with too much time on their hands. Still, all my cupcakes were eaten so that’s a success in my eyes!

Ingredients (Makes 24)

6 large free-range eggs

10 oz self-raising flour

10 oz caster sugar

10 oz butter

2 ½ tsp baking powder

Splash of milk

Scraping vanilla bean paste

For Icing

Large knob of butter

Spoonful of cream cheese

Lots of icing sugar

Few splashes of milk

Blue food gel

For decorations

Edible silver glitter

Red, white and blue royal icing

Preheat the oven to 180⁰C/ Gas Mark 5. Line two muffin trays with Jubilee cake papers- these ones are from Lakeland but they do a pretty range at Sainsbury’s.

This is a really easy all-in-one method so combine all the cupcake ingredients into a large mixing bowl using an electric whisk until smooth.

Use a desert spoon to fill the cases ¾ full. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown on top and springy in the middle. Cool on a wire rack.

The next thing to do is to make the royal icing decorations. You can make any shape you fancy really; I’ve seen crowns, flags, faces- whatever. I went with hearts, mainly because we had the cutters. Roll out the icing onto a surface lightly dusted with icing sugar and leave to harden and dry on a piece of baking parchment. You need the decorations to dry for at least an hour or more so that they stick up properly in the buttercream.  To layer them up like I’ve done, mix a very small bowl of icing sugar and water to make a kind of glue and paint a little blob in between the shapes to help them stick.

To make the icing, first cream together the butter and cream cheese. Sift icing sugar in small amounts, mixing as you go. If the mixture becomes too stiff add a splash of milk. When you’ve made enough icing to cover all your cakes (I made a huuuuge amount) add the blue colouring a very tiny amount at a time until the mixture is the colour you want. I was originally going for light blue but because of the yellow colour of the butter it looked a kind of sickly green, so I had to go for a darker blue. If you wanted a really light blue I’d suggest using a marshmallow buttercream mix where you use egg whites.

I then used a piping bag with a star nozzle to swirl on a generous helping of icing. Sprinkle the edible glitter and stick a decoration into the side of the icing. Display them on a stand and as per usual, enjoy with a cup of Great British tea!

Fruity Flag Traybake

My mum made this for the party using the recipe in June’s Good Food magazine. It was delish if I do say so myself and a tasty traybake you could make for any occasion.

Ingredients

100g/4oz butter

175g/6oz self-raising flour

50g/2oz ground almonds

2 tsp baking powder

4 large eggs

225g/8oz caster sugar

125ml/4fl oz full-fat Greek yoghurt

Zest 2 lemons

For icing and decoration

175g/6oz butter

350g/12oz icing sugar

300g/11oz raspberries

175g/6oz blueberries

Heat the oven to 160⁰C/Gas Mark 4. Butter and line a 30 x 20cm traybake tin with baking parchment.

Combine all the cake ingredients into a large mixing bowl using an electric whisk. Pour into the tin and use a spatula to level the surface. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until lightly golden and springy in the middle. Lift the cake out of the tin and cool on a wire rack.

To make the icing, first beat the butter until fluffy. Sift the icing sugar a little bit at a time mixing until completely combined. When the cake is completely cooled spread the icing all over the cake. To make the flag place a double row of raspberries across the middle to make a cross, with a single line connecting to each corner. Fill in the gaps with blueberries et voilà!  

This is a picture of the desert table at our street’s party. I think it’s fair to say everyone put on a few pounds this weekend in cake alone…

Happy Jubilee Queenie!