Aunty, are we chefs?

I had my friend's children over for a sleep over on Friday and we had so much fun. The highlight though was when we made cupcakes. It left the kitchen in a state but it was well worth it

Ingredients

• 2 very sweet and willing sous chefs :-)
• 1 cup self raising flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• pinch of salt
• 125g softened butter
• 2 1/2 cups icing sugar
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• food colouring of your choice (we used pink and blue)

Step 1

Preheat your oven to 180C. Sift flour, sugar, cocoa and salt in a bowl. In a separate bowl, mix the 2 1/2 cups milk, oil, vanilla essence, eggs. Add this to the sifted flour and mix well. It should look something like this...

Step 2

Place 12 cupcake cases in a muffin tray and spoon the batter, filling each one about 3/4 of the way. This can get seriously messy if not done right. My little helpers did very well though.

Step 3

Bake the cupcakes for approximately 15 - 20 minutes. You need to watch those puppies like a hawk (the cupcakes, that is :-))

Step 4

In a separate bowl, place butter, vanilla essence, icing sugar and 2 teaspoons of milk and cream until it's in a spreadable consistency (using an electric beater makes life much easier). Place half of the mix in another bowl. We added a teaspoon of pink food colouring to the one half and blue to the other half.

Step 5

My sous chefs iced and decorated the cupcakes and had so much fun doing so.

And the end result.... Perfection :-)

My little helpers thanked me profusely for the tutorial and really seemed pleased with their hard work. While enjoying their goodies, the little boy looked me square in the face and asked : 'Aunty, are we chefs now?'

'Yes my angel, you are now chefs!' I replied :-)