Pretty patty cakes

Yet another weekend has passed, but what a productive one! We've seen just about everyone we know, the house is sparkling clean and I now have a freezer full of dinners, including a dozen doggie dinners. Good stuff! In the middle of all of this, I thought some pretty little patty cakes might be the go. Tim didn't disagree.

Now I'm not a regular reader of Woman's Day, but the other day I was in line at the supermarket (trapped, you might say) and this week's copy caught my eye. No, not because Simone's taken Shane back again, but because of the neat little cook book glued to the front as a freebie - The Women's Weekly "Baking Favourites." I couldn't resist. It turns out to have been a an excellent purchase and one that made buying the magazine worthwhile. I've already made two things out of it this weekend and I'm pretty happy with both. I'm also up to date with all the celebrity gossip.

The first is Patty Cakes with Glace' Icing. This is quite a traditional cake mix, and I just added a little more vanilla. You could also add some lemon zest for a bit of zing. They cakes came out light and fresh and fragrant.

I used some cute little papers I found in a fantastic kitchen store in Bowral a week ago. There's pastel blue, pink, yellow and white in the one packet. I topped them with glace' icing and sweet little sugar flowers I found in the same store. These cost about eight bucks for 20 pieces, and they're very fragile, but so cute and perfect for a special occasion! They made it back to Canberra with only about two broken. Then of course I dropped one and broke off a petal. But I still had enough.

About the glace' icing, I found this looks good but you have to work quickly because it dries very fast. I kept it over the hot water but occasionally added a few more drops of water when it became too thick. You could just use a water and icing sugar mix though.

Ingredients

125g butter, softened

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 (165g) cup caster sugar

3 eggs

2 cups (300g) self-raising flour

1/4 cup (60ml) milk

Glace' icing:

2 cups (320g) icing sugar

20g butter, melted

2 tbsp hot water (approx)

Preheat oven to 180º C/ 160ºC fan forced. Line 12 hole muffin pan with paper cases.

Place ingredients in a medium bowl; beat with electric mixer on low speed until ingredients are combined. Increase speed to medium; beat about 3 minutes or until mixture is smooth and paler in colour.

Divide mixture among cases. Bake about 25 minutes. Stand cakes in pan 5 minutes before turning, top side up onto wire racks to cool.

Meanwhile, make icing: sift icing sugar into small heatproof bowl; stir in butter and enough of the water to make a firm paste. Place bowl over small saucepan of simmering water; stir until icing is spreadable. (I actually just threw everything in a bowl and stirred over the simmering water)