Rainbow Fairy Cakes

So I am now 8 days past my due date and after a visit to the hospital yesterday, we discovered that I have about a 30% chance of going into labour naturally in the next 7 - 10 days! Eek! So, I have been booked in for an induction on Tuesday morning...which means more waiting around, unless Titch decides to come on his/her own beforehand anyway :)

I wanted to do something a bit different to keep me from getting too bored today, and I actually really felt like baking something. I went online to get some inspiration and after catching up on Becky's fab blog, I decided to try her gorgeous looking rainbow fairy cakes.

I know this is a bit of a different kind of blog post for me, but I loved making these fairy cakes so much, and they turned out looking really cute (I haven't tried them yet - I thought I should wait for the hubby to get home!) so I wanted to share them and how I made them with you :) These are also great for a home made Mother's Day gift, and I'll be taking them along for dinner tonight at my parents house as an extra treat!

I first went out an bought the bits that I needed - Becky recommended a vanilla cupcake/fairy cake mix. The only vanilla mix they had left in Waitrose was a Postman Pat one! Retro! Still, for 85p, each pack made 10 fairy cakes, so I didn't complain...I just left off the Postman Pat cartoon sugar paper decorations. I also picked up 4 Dr. Oetker food colour gels in pink, blue, green and yellow, butterfly sprinkles in pretty pastel shades and some frosting for decorating.

With this fairy cake mix, you just need 1 egg per bag of mix (I used 2 lots of mixes to make extra cakes, as fairy cakes are only teeny).

I started by mixing the batter to make the cakes - it's best to use a whisk (even better an electric one) but I have yet to buy one of these, so I just used my muscles and a fork.

Once the batter is all nicely mixed, I divided it into four bowls - well, teacups actually - and I added a few drops of each food colour to each lot of batter.

I then got out my cupcake baking tray and filled them with fairy cake paper holders. I then spooned a little of each colour batter into them, creating a really pretty rainbow effect.

The batter was enough for 18 fairy cakes. Once I had spooned all the batter in, I popped the cakes in the oven at 180 degrees for about 13 minutes (I have a fan oven).

When the cakes had finished baking...they smelt delish and they looked like this:

You can see the colours pretty clearly here. Once they had cooled down completely, I then used a yummy Dr. Oetker frosting mix to decorate the tops...and to make them even more scrummy!

The final step was the decorating. I bought these very pretty pastel coloured butterfly sprinkles, as I thought they would go perfectly with the rainbow cakes, and would make them even more appropriate for Mother's Day.

So finally, I just popped on the butterflies wherever they seemed best to go! I tried not to go too over the top and keep to about 5 - 6 butterflies per fair cake.

So there you go! Thanks to Becky for providing me with a really fun idea to keep me busy and I hope they taste as good as they look. Will you be trying out this fun and yummy recipe? Enjoy x