Red Nose Day fairy cakes

Quick and easy cupcakes for Comic Relief. I wanted to make something super-speedy and appropriate to mark Red Nose Day today. I didn't have much time in the evening, and these cupcakes fitted the bill perfectly. This must be the easiest cake mixture in the world, and tastes fantastic, largely due to the use of real butter. Well, it's worth it to raise money for a worthy cause!!!
The half a cherry represents a red nose. Yep, this seems obvious to me too, but quite a number of my colleagues didn't click on until I explained it..... even though I've been raising money for Comic Relief all week by taking cakes into work. Well, I think they look like red noses!

Fairy cakes with red noses

Ingredients

120g very soft butter

120g self raising flour

2 medium eggs

120g caster sugar

1tsp baking powder

2-3 tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

9 glace cherries, cut in half for decoration

Icing sugar

Method:

- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Line 18 holes (you'll need two bun tins really, but see note later) with fairy cake cases (not muffin cases, which are larger).

- Place all ingredients (except cherries and milk) in a bowl and whisk with an electric hand whisk until well combined, light and fluffy.

- Add the milk a little at a time until your mixture is softer and drops more easily from the spoon.

- Divide the mixture between the cases and put in the oven.

- Bake for about 18-25 minutes, but check after 15 if you know your oven is hot. They are done when pale golden brown and springy to the touch.

- Remove to a wire rack and allow to cool.

- Make a simple water icing by mixing icing sugar with hot water until you have the required consistency. I don't have amounts for this, simply adding more icing sugar if the mixture is too runny or more water if it's too stiff. Add the water 1tsp at a time though - it's so, so easy to get into a cycle of too wet, too stiff, too wet, too stiff....... until you end up with gallons of icing! I made mine fairly stiff so it didn't run off the fairy cakes too much.

- Add half a cherry and admire your work.

Notes: I only possess one muffin tin. I filled all 12 holes with fairy cake cases and balanced the remaining six on the top, between the holes. This worked surprisingly well, but the cakes balanced on the top cooked in about 15 minutes, the ones in the proper holes took nearly 25!?!

I also used quite small eggs for these and needed to use 3 tbsp milk to make the mixture soft enough.

If you want, you could fold some chopped glace cherries through the mixture before baking, say 100g. If you want to do this, wash them first to rid them of the sticky syrup that will make them all sink to the bottom.

Now for the important bit..... sell them for as much as possible to raise funds for Comic Relief. Yum! Everyone who had one of these loved them, and I'm sure your friends and family could be persuaded to part with a bit of hard cash, even in these (whisper it) credit crunch times to support such a worthy cause.