Blueberry and Lemon Cupcakes

Don’t freak out if the ingredients look intimidating, look at the notes first!

115g margarine

100g caster sugar

50g rice flour

30g cornflour

20g maize flour

10g potato flour

10g ground almonds

1/4 tsp xanthum gum

1/3 tsp gf baking powder

Pinch of salt

2 medium eggs

1tbsp rice milk

100g blueberries

Zest of half a lemon

Dribble of vanilla essence (optional)

Makes 12 fairy cakes, possibly with a little bit left over.

1. Pre-heat the oven to 190C or 170 (fan).

2. Line a fairy cake tray with cases

3. Weigh out your flours (see notes below), ground almonds, xanthum, salt and baking powder and mix them all together thoroughly.

4. Cream together the sugar and margarine until light and fluffy (I use an electric whisk).

5. Break in the eggs one at a time and mix again.  If the mixture starts to curdle put a little of the flour in until it comes back together.  If you’re using vanilla, add it now.

6.  Put the blueberries into the flour and make sure they’re covered in it (this helps make sure they don’t all drift to the bottom of your cakes)

7. Add the flour, blueberries, and lemon zest.  Use a metal spoon to stir it all together.  I like to squish a few blueberries so they distribute through the mixture too.

8. The mixture should be easy to run a spoon through.  I use the old-fashioned drop test – get a spoonful of mixture and flick it sharply downwards (over the bowl) whilst you count to 3.  We want it to fall off the spoon between 1 and 2 – a bit wetter than wheat-flour cakes.

9.  If you’re cool, go ahead and put the mix in the trays.  If not add a splish of rice milk and mix, then try again.

9. Once your texture is hunky dory spoon the mix into the trays.

10.  If I have an extra I use mini cake cases (about 2cm across?) make fairy food cakes.

11.  Bake for 10-15 minutes, depending on the whimsical nature of your oven.

12.  These are best eaten on the day, they're yummy after that, but a tad sticky.

Adapted from the amazing Iced Gem Bakes recipe.

Floury notes

There’s lots of different flours in here, but it’ll probably work just as well with Doves or a bought blend.  I find bought blends a bit heavy for sponge, they’re more ‘general needs’ and have a lot of xanthum in.

Size isn’t everything!

This mix and the measurements are for small, old-fashioned, English fairy cakes - I can have a treat without shovelling in calories, they’re the right size for kiddiewinks, and Mr FODMAP can eat 2.  If you’ve made some of the mini fairy food muffins then they make excellent treats for dieters (unless, like me, you eat 3), or they’re wonderful in low FODMAP trifle.

Butter know what you’re doing

A note on Margarine: I use stork or a supermarket ‘baking block’ for sponges (and so does Mary Berry, so don’t worry!).  If you use a softer spread (Pure or Vitalite in the UK) the extra water content means you probably don’t need the rice milk

Speaking of xanthum

You can probably get away without it, especially if your tummy reacts badly to it.  Things might be a bit crumbly though. 

If you can’t eat nuts

Add more maize flour, but we aware the nuts help retain moisture, so it might go dry more quickly.

Do the rice thing

If you’re not a rice milk person you can probably get away with lacto-free or soya milk, but almond milk might make things a bit dense.

Whether it goes pear-shaped or wonderfully…

Please tell me.  Send pics (and remember to show me your innards!), or even better, samples.  I’d love to hear how you get on!