Calling these “Strawberry Cupcakes” is a little misleading – they’re actually a plain butter cake, with strawberry flavoured icing. Much tastier than the lemon version below, and much prettier as well. (Soon I’m going to try and make a cupcake that looks more sophisticated, but I’m rather attached to the childish versions at the moment.)

1/2 cup softened butter
3/4 cup castor sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 eggs
2 cups self raising flour
3/4 cup milk
red food dye

icing:
2 cups icing sugar
water
red food dye
strawberry essence flavouring

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Beat the butter, sugar, vanilla essence and eggs together until light and fluffy. Add the flour and milk alternately, beating until you have a smooth batter.

Drip some red food dye into the mixture, and stir delicately, creating swirls of pink in the mixture.

Spoon into a muffin pan, into paper cases – about 1 big dessert spoonful in each case. Makes 12.

Bake for 20 minutes.

For the icing, mix together the sugar, food dye, a few splashes of flavouring and enough water for a fairly stiff icing. When the cakes have cooled a little, spoon the icing over them, and if you like, add some hundreds and thousands as soon as you’ve put the icing on, otherwise they won’t stick. Regress to childhood, and eat several, licking the icing off your fingers afterwards.