Fairy cakes. Sweet, beautiful, fluffy, light fairy cakes. Little drops of heaven that put the biggest smile on your face no matter your age. The children and I love to bake, and cake making is one of our favourite pastimes. We are forever looking for fun and exciting ways to decorate our sponges, from drippy icing to whippy butter cream, sprinkles, balls and jelly sweets. So when I saw these pretty fondant plungers online at Yolli I just had to have them!
Yolli Flower And Hearts Fondant Plunger
We use a very simple recipe to make our fairy cakes, taking the weight of one egg and measuring out equal amounts of self-raising flour, sugar and butter which we mix altogether in a bowl until light and smooth and spoon into cake cases on an oven tray. We bake our cakes in a preheated oven at 170 degrees for around 12-15 minutes until they turn a light golden brown. The cakes then cool on a wire rack ready for topping.
I usually make my own icing with icing sugar and water, or butter and sugar, but this time I popped to the corner shop for a packet of ready to roll icing so that we could test out our new fondant plungers. We tore off a plum sized ball of ready to roll icing and rolled it to about half a centimetre thickness ready to cut. The Yolli plungers are made from metal and are very sturdy, precise and great for children to use, as they’re not cheaply made or easy to break like other plastic varieties. In my opinion if you buy cheap you buy twice, and for just £4.99 for each set of three they’re certainly affordable and of a great quality that will last. We chose two sets of plungers in flower and heart shapes which come in a set of three of sizes small, medium and large.
Millie Loved Using The Fondant Plungers To Decorate Her Cakes
Millie loved pushing the plungers into the icing as they cut the fondant much like a cookie cutter would, you then place it onto the cake, push down the plunger and it sticks it into place, dispensing a pretty little flower or heart shape in whichever size you choose. Fairy cakes can very easily become sickly from the sheer amount of sweet and sugary ingredients and toppings often used. However our experience of using the plungers made the cakes more pleasant to eat as we didn’t use as much icing as usual, resultantly containing less sugar. In this case less really is more! The cakes look so pretty and classical with their white floral and heart toppings, and I’m sure they wouldn’t look out of place at an afternoon tea party or wedding. Next time we’re going to experiment with different coloured icing and decorate a big birthday cake with our fondant plungers as it’s a lovely activity for children and keeps Mummy’s sweet tooth happy too.
