I’m a little late this year, but yesterday I finally got around to making a Christmas cake. For the entire day, the scent of warm fruit and brandy spread through the house and I was almost whistling Jingle Bells by bedtime.

I wish I could say that the recipe was handed down my family through the generations, but this one comes from a Good Housekeeping Step-by-Step Cookbook published in 1998. But what is most important is that the recipe makes the BEST Christmas cake. One year I strayed and used Nigella’s recipe and much as I love her cupcakes, muffins, cookies and general chocolately goodness, the cake was a disappointment. I have never strayed again.

The cake has been bathed in brandy and is now sitting wrapped in the back of the larder until I decide that maybe it needs a bit more feeding in the run up to the Big Day.

Add together an army of Dalek cookies…

…a plate of caramel crispy cakes made with melted Mars bars…

…and Malteser flavour cake covered with Maltesters, and you have sixteen happy children, sent home to their parents full of sugar.

(All recipes from Feast by Nigella Lawson)

I’ve been baking again. This time it’s because the smallest of the small people did not approve of chocolate and cherry cupcakes.

These are basic sponge buns with chocolate drops in, which *do* meet with approval. It’s a recipe given to me by my grandma, and it’s my fallback recipe whenever I need to whip up cakes without having to buy fancy ingredients. You can use the same recipe baked in two sandwich tins to make a Victoria sponge (preferably filled with whipped cream and fresh strawberries) but buns are best for small people. The recipe’s main advantage is that as long as you remember the ingredients and method, you never need to remember quantities.

So, because chocolate and cake are proven to help when puzzling over a complicated stitch pattern, I present the recipe in all its glory.

Ingredients:
2 large or 3 medium free-range happy eggs
Self-raising flour
Unsalted butter
Sugar
Vanilla extract (optional)
Chocolate chips
12-cup bun tin lined with paper cases

Method:
Weigh the eggs. Weigh out the same weight in the flour, butter and sugar. Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and soft and fluffy.

Beat in the eggs one at a time with a little of the flour. Add a teaspoonful, or as much as you want, of the vanilla extract, if using. I didn’t, because I couldn’t find it in the cupboard and I might not actually have any… Fold in the rest of the flour with a metal spoon.

Mix in as many chocolate chips as you want (just one packet is considered a bit miserly in this house) and spoon the mixture into the cases, remembering to scrape out all the excess with a spatula so there’s no reason for any arguments about who gets to lick the bowl.

I prefer the contrast of plain chocolate with the sponge, but my corner shop only has milk chocolate drops, so that’s what I’ve used.

Note: I use larger than average cake cases because they come decorated with dinosaurs and footballs and other things. If you’re using the regular white Supercook bun cases from the supermarket, you’ll probably be able to make around 18 buns. The mixture will be fairly thick, so just dollop it into the cases; it spreads out when it’s in the oven.

Bake at 190ºc/gas mark 5 for 15 to 20 minutes, turning tin around halfway through this time if you have a crappy oven like mine. Turn cakes out of tin and leave to cool on a wire rack for as long as possible. Add icing and sprinkles and other doodads if you can be bothered, but they’re quite interesting just as they are.

Chocolate cherry cupcakes from How to be a Domestic Goddess, including one special one for someone’s birthday tomorrow…

Having a ten year old makes me feel ancient. But I can take my mind off it with cake.

Pear and Ginger Muffins from Nigella Express

Spending all day working deserves a bit of a muffiny treat, wouldn’t you agree?