Too shakey to bakey

It was Sprog 2’s class party today and I had the best intentions. I’d already made little piggy cupcakes for Sprog 1’s party, so a precedent had been set. I’ve been experimenting with chook cupcakes – the pic is a bit rough, but I think they show potential.

But then I went out last night for a Chrissie drink, got a teeny bit stonkered, tweeted that I’d accidentally taken a photo of my boobs with my iPad (I’d been attempting to photograph my new hair-dye job while undressing for bed, as you do when you’re a teeny bit stonkered) and fell into an alcohol-induced coma.

This morning I didn’t feel much like making chook cupcakes, I didn’t feel much like making anything at all, other than lying on the couch skulling Diet Coke. But Sprog 2’s innocent little eyes were staring up at me hopefully, so I handed her a jar featuring four different shaped sprinkles (dots, hearts, butterflies, leaves) and told her to go to town on some store-bought plain bikkies I hastily smeared with store-bought icing. She was stoked.

I’ll have a go at the chook cupcakes again another day – the icing wasn’t quite smooth enough on this test one. Here’s how they’re done …

Recipe: chook cupcakes

(makes 12)

125g butter, room temp

3/4 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

2 eggs

1/2 cup milk

1 & 1/2 cups self-raising flour

yellow icing

12 yellow lolly snakes

24 brown mini M&Ms

24 red Smarties

METHOD: Preheat oven to 180C. Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla essence with electric beaters. Add eggs, beat well. Add milk and self-raising flour. Mix with wooden spoon to combine then beat for 30 seconds with electric beaters. Spoon into patty cases in a 12-cupcake tray. Bake for around 12-15 minutes, until golden. Cool on wire racks. Ice cupcakes with yellow icing. Cut head and tail off snakes to create beaks, use the end of a spoon to create a little hole to insert the snakes into the cake. Add two brown mini M&Ms for eyes and two red Smarties for combs.