A wonderful family recipe that tastes well and is simple to remember! Although they are relatively straightforward, you can customize the flavorings or add frosting to suit your tastes. Warm coffee or tea goes well with them.
| Prep Time: | 15 mins |
| Cook Time: | 20 mins |
| Total Time: | 35 mins |
| Servings: | 18 |
| Yield: | 18 fairy cakes |
Ingredients
- ¾ cup superfine sugar
- ½ cup margarine
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 pinch ginger
- 1 ½ cups self-rising flour
- ¼ cup confectioners’ sugar
- 1 pinch cardamom (Optional)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lay out about 18 cupcake (muffin) papers on a baking sheet or place them in a muffin pan.
- In a medium bowl, cream together the sugar and margarine until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time using an electric mixer, or the whole thing may be mixed in a blender. Add cinnamon and ginger to the batter and mix well. Stir in the flour until well blended. Spoon a generous tablespoon of the batter into each paper, and level it out.
- Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven, until the tops spring back when lightly pressed. Dust with confectioners’ sugar and cardamom when cooled.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 129 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 18 g |
| Cholesterol | 21 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 0 g |
| Protein | 2 g |
| Saturated Fat | 1 g |
| Sodium | 199 mg |
| Sugars | 10 g |
| Fat | 6 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
Very good overall. The one adjustment I made that I think helps overcome the blandness is putting the cardamom in the batter (1/4 tsp.) instead of on top, and bumping the ginger up to 1/2 tsp. Also drizzled a very light vanilla icing on top. Shared these with some friends and they loved them.
Great little cakes! I had to make some adjustments because of the flour, I have to have gluten free. I was a little worried, but the cakes turned out perfect. It seems like there needed to be more spice-ing up to these so I did double the cinnamon, put in 1/4 tsp of ginger AND nutmeg and just a dash of allspice. I also added 1/2 tsp of vanilla. Since I didn’t have self-rising flour I added 1 1/2 tsp of baking powder and 1/4 tsp of salt to make up the difference. Information on the icing would have been nice, or at least a link to the one used. And one last thing, cardamom should NOT be optional! And there should be more than just a pinch. Thanks for sharing. : )
Good! Yummy and simple to make.
These were good but I think the margarine made it taste greasy. I will make them again and use real butter to see if it works better.
they were delicous!!! i made my own honey-peanut buttercream icing to go on top and i added 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg and ginger. other than that they were excellent
This is a great recipe and these come out so great. They are just the right amount of sweetness that even those that don’t care for sweets fall in love with them. I have my kindergarten class make them with me every year for St. Patricks day events and even my pickiest ones eat them! Thanks for the recipe it lives in my cookbook!
I’ve given this a three because the cakes I made were gorgeous but I made a few alterations to the recipe based on the comments so if I’d kept to the original recipe it would have been too dense and not spicy enough! I added just over a cup full of flour and added a teaspoon of mxed spice in with double the amont of cinnamon and ginger specified. I also Iced these with a cinnamon butter icing and they were delicious! Ligt, fluff, spicy and satisfying.
There is far too much flour in this recipe to be considered a true British “fairy cake” recipe. It comes out much more like a muffin/bread product with this much flour (unless you use extremely fine and low gluten flour like cake flour). SO, if you really want a true fairy cake and something a lot less dry you should reduce the flour to just over 1 cup (a heaped cupful). This will be more accurate, and more moist! Still I give this recipe 3 stars because it’s basically good, just the proportions are slightly wrong.
My whole family really enjoyed these. The spice blend is nice and sweet without being too sweet. We topped them with just confectioner’s sugar but next time I may try just a little drizzle of glaze and maybe some cinnamon sugar. Came together really easily too!
I loved this recipe! I added a tsp. of vanilla to it and it turned out great. Highly recommended for a quick breakfast or snack.
It was a great desert, not to rich, but just right. The whole family loved it!
I love this recipe. Thanks for putting it here.
They are good for what they are but they are kind of plain. They are really good for people who don’t like chocolate.
I made no changes to the recipe at all except icing & decorating them instead of dusting w/ sugar. A very nice, easy recipe to do with kids which is a lot more special than your average fairy cake!
wow these are fast and easy, we love spice so add a tsp of ginger.
These really are simple to make and remember, but they’re sort of bland. I added more of the spices than what it called for, and added more cardamom in the powdered sugar than what it called for and they still came out slightly bland. I’m not sure how fluffy these are supposed to be as I didn’t have any self rising flour so I just winged it and added some baking powder. They tasted good warm out of the oven, and got a little crisp after cooling. A decent, tasty way to snack or start breakfast.