Cheery Cherry Cupcakes and Fat Bottoms

I recently got Susannah Blake's Cupcakes book and have been making many scrumptious recipes from it. I especially liked these lemon meringue cupcakes which have lemon curd in the middle and are topped with meringue. Needless to say they didn't last very long. I've been reading a lot of Donal Skehan's lovely blog recently with all it's great tasty recipes. He has a recipe for Christmas Cupcakes which I must try before the festive season.

Speaking of which last year the Fat Bottomed Santa made his majestic journey around our house at christmas time. This year with all the cutbacks in the house and the recession I have to say I was worried if he'd show up at all. I needn't have worried because the Fat Bottomed Santa is much more resourceful than that. He showed up for the first time today with some cherry almond cupcakes he'd made. They're very tasty and he even left me a recipe.

Cherry Almond Cupcakes

115g Margarine or Butter

115g Golden Caster Sugar

95g Self Raising Flour

20g Ground Almonds

1tsp Vanilla Essence

1-2 tbsp Milk

2 Eggs

Glace Cherries

Icing Sugar

Lemon Juice

Cream the butter and sugar together until it's light fully mixed. Then mix in the eggs one at a time and add the vanilla essence. Sieve the flour and almonds onto the mix and add the cherries. Fold together the mixture adding the milk if needed.

Bake in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius for about 15-20 minutes until the cupcakes have a golden top and are firm to the touch. Times may vary depending on your oven.

Leave the cupcakes to cool.

I mix icing in a kind of random manner. I usually use about 300g of icing sugar and add a tbsp of lemon juice and a tbsp of warm water. I mix it adding more icing sugar if it is too thin and more water if it's too thick. This icing shouldn't be too thick. Spoon it over the cupcakes, it helps if the cases are those big muffin ones so the icing doesn't spill out. Then top each one with a cherry and enjoy.