Chocolate fairy cakes

This week has been rubbish! Which is probably why I've made langue du chat biscuits, bakewell tarts and an experimental set of chocolate fairy cakes. I've been reading some other baking blogs, and realising that they're very useful for tips etc, so I shall endeavour to follow their instructive example. 

The bakewell tarts worked ok (though apparently you can't call them that unless they're made in Bakewell - I don't think anyone will sue me though?!), though the pastry still needs improving. I suspect I might be trying to improve my pastry skills for a very long time! I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong - I'll write about it in detail at some point and perhaps someone will point out an obvious error. Langue du chat biscuits didn't work either - will post again once I make them again and succeed!

I got home from work this evening feeling that all I could do was eat chocolate and watch a film. I did, however, successfully eat some leftover bolognaise (particularly important after my lunch of a carrot and a creme egg…), and then decided that rather than just eating piles of chocolate I would instead make chocolate fairy cakes and then eat them!

So, here is my account of my not-altogether-successful fairy cake creations, as I grow ever more frustrated as I try to make a decent sponge cake. Having made sponge cakes fairly regularly from the age of 7 I appear to have suddenly lost the knack. What's that about? I beat the butter and sugar, then beat in the eggs one at a time and once again it CURDLED. I'm so annoyed! I am entirely determined that I shall at some point successfully make a sponge cake without it curdling. It never fully recovered to be honest, but the cakes taste good, as I was intending them to be a bit more squishy than normal. I decided to try using soft brown sugar instead of caster, and substituting ground almonds from 1 oz of flour.

So, in case you want to make them, here's the recipe:

6 oz soft brown sugar

6 oz marg

4 oz self raising flour

1 oz cocoa

1 oz ground almonds

3 eggs

Preheat oven to 180C

The instructions (that I seem incapable of following at the moment) are:

1. Cream together the marg and sugar until light and fluffy

2. Add eggs one at a time (using at room temp remember, not that that helped me!) following each with a spoonful of flour

3. Fold in the flour making sure mixture is nice, light and airy!

4. Spoon into fairy cake cases and bake for 15 mins at 180C

For the icing I mixed together some choc (that had a little bit of oil added as it was leftovers from a chocolate fountain), with a bit of butter. I believe it was supposed to go harder when left to cool, and therefore spreadable, but that didn't quite work (possibly due to aforementioned oil) so I sifted in some icing sugar. 

So, want to bet I'll be having another go soon? I dislike being beaten by sponge cakes, particularly, as I said, because I've been making them for about 18 years, so they really should behave themselves.