Pirates - Skull and Cross Bone Fairy Cakes

When I got up this morning I didn't realise that I would be spending the evening making Skull and Cross Bone fairy cakes, but sometimes that's how your day goes.

Lauren's school are having their pirate themed Summer Fair on Wednesday and as I was rushing away from school today, I heard the immortal words "Just the person I wanted to see....you like baking!" and before you could say "Shiver me timbers" I'd agreed to make 12 cakes!

We were off to Asda anyway to look for a stripy top so that Lauren can look at least a little pirate like for the Fair, however, there seems to be a stripy top shortage in our area. It did give me a chance to stock up on cake ingredients and while I was selecting all thoughts of white icing and sprinkles jumped out of my head!

And so, there we have it, not 12 white iced fairy cakes with sprinkles but 36(!!) Skull and Cross Bones.

I hope they go down well, they are very rough around the edges, my hand was really aching towards the last few!...I'm hoping the children won't mind, I'm a bit scared that they will all end up with mouths that look like they've been chewing on coal but I'm sure they will find that hilarious.

I used my normal recipe where I weigh the eggs in their shells (I weighed 4, 2 would have been more sensible) and use the same amount of butter, sugar, self raising flour, half a teaspoon of baking powder and a teaspoon of vanilla essence, whizz it all up stir in a variety of chocolate drops, spoon into cake cases and bake at GM6/200C/400F for 15-20 minutes until firm to the touch and golden brown. I then decorated using the new Silver Spoon Fondant Icing Sugar, I used too much - 125g and 1.5 tbsp liquid should be enough, give it a good stir (I used black colouring as some of my liquid), then use to coat the cooled cakes. I learnt pretty quickly not to go right up to the edges or it gets messy. Then I used a tube of Silver Spoon White Writing Icing to add the skulls and bones, it's a bit hard on the hand and you need to be patient and steady and probably a slightly better artist than me..or maybe not, they don't look like anything else.

Fingers crossed they like them and some money is raised for the school.