Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

On Saturday I am attending my first fete. I will have my very own stall selling cakes & cookies. I am really looking forward tro it, but can't decide what I should take with me & how much. I've had an idea for lemon meringue cakes for a while & finally got around to trying some.

My first attempt ended up with glass and meringue icing all over my kitchen when the glass bowl I was using to make the frosting exploded. (Note: Do not use a glass bowl over heat to make meringue frosting!!) So, still a little bit afraid to try it again I found an alternative meringue recipe that didn't require heat.

I won't post complete recipe details here, for copyright reasons, but I'll tell you where to find them.

First make a lemon sponge. I used a standard 100g cake mix, but left out the vanilla extract and added the grated zest of 1 lemon. This made 8 cupcakes. When cooked and cooled, cut out a small circle from the top of the cake and fill with lemon curd - made using the recipe from Rachel Allen's Bake book (p.278) - and put the cut out bit of cake back. Then I made the meringue frosting recipe from Bake Me I'm Yours: Cup Cake (p.72) and spread over the top. Finally browing the top slightly with my cooks blowtorch - be careful not to set the paper cases alight! :)

Fairy Cake or Cupcake?

The Cupcake tower I made on the weekend sparked a discussion about the difference between Fairy Cakes and Cupcakes. Which got me thinking. In my mind there was no difference, they just had different names, fairy cakes in the UK, cupcakes in America.

In my kitchen, fairy cakes are smaller, made in 'bun' tins, while cupcakes are larger and made in deeper muffin tins. (There is quite a difference between a muffin & a cupcake, which maybe I'll cover in another post!) For example, with my standard cake mix I get anything up to 16 fairy cakes and 9 cupcakes. So they're not quite twice the size, but not far off.

I found this article by WiseGeek that talks about the main difference between British fairy cakes and American cupcakes being that cupcakes use a denser cake mix, while fairy cakes tend to be lighter.

There's also a mini cupcake that is smaller than a fairy cake - pretty much a bite size cake. 

I hope this clears it up a little. And if you want any cakes - cup, fairy or mini, please give me a shout. :)