Cupcakes

Now this really is ‘Baking and the Dinner Party Solution’.

At about the time I started getting into top cupcake and fairy-cake mode, ostensibly for children, I noticed that the people who really seemed to get excited by them were the children’s parents. I think it’s not till you hit 30 that nostalgia is even a remotely comforting option. Since then, I’ve decided that cupcakes and fairy cakes – by which I mean the plain-bottomed prettily iced cupcakes – are the perfect things to make for dinner. And by this I mean not some shiny tabled, silver-laid grand dinner party but those evenings when you have friends for supper in the kitchen (the only kind of dinner party I know). Give people cheese instead of pudding (or nothing at all: it ain’t obligatory) and wheel out these dinky numbers with the coffee and tea. You can make the cakes a day in advance, keep them in an airtight container and ice them later – although since the icing helps keep them fresh you may as well, if you’re using a water rather than a butter icing, ice them a day before too and then you’ll have nothing to do on the day itself.