Creaming Soda and Fairy Floss Cupcakes by Mandy Wrangles

Sometimes when baking, everything goes to plan. And sometimes it doesn’t. This recipe was one of those doesn’t times…but that doesn’t necessarily mean disaster.

 I got this recipe for creaming soda cupcakes from a friend via the internet. ‘Ooh,’ I thought. ‘Everyone loves creaming soda. I might be able to tweak and change this recipe and make something really amazing.’ Little did I know just how much I’d have to tweak and change. But the end result? AMAZING.

What you need – CUPCAKES:

• 2 cups of Kirks brand creaming soda (ok, confession time. I didn’t use Kirk’s brand like the recipe told me to. This could have been where things went wrong, but I can’t be sure).
• 150g unsalted butter
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 cups of self raising flour
• 2 large eggs

How it’s done:

Sift the flour and sugar into a large bowl and put aside. Melt butter in the microwave and whisk with the eggs in a second bowl. Add the creaming soda to the butter and egg mix.

Make a well in the middle of the flour and pour in the egg/butter/creaming soda. Gently fold the mixture together. Pour into cupcake liners and bake for 10 to 15 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius.

All good, right? Wrong. My cupcakes were more like pancakes. They didn’t rise at all. I double checked – yes, I used self raising flour. Next time, I’ll add some baking powder as well. But, how to save this batch when the cupcake cases were only 2/3 full?

Jelly. Creaming Soda flavoured jelly. Oh, yeah!

What you need:

1 packet of Aeroplane Jelly ‘Create-a-jelly’.

1 cup of boiling water

200 ml of creaming soda.

How it’s done:

Aeroplane Jelly make this awesome Create-a-jelly that can be found in the supermarket alongside the flavoured stuff. Create-a-jelly allows you to make any flavour you desire. Just add your favourite fruit juice, soft drink, iced tea, cordial…

Anyway, I just happened to have a pack in the pantry, and made up a batch according to the instructions (dissolve the Create-a-jelly with the boiling water, then add the creaming soda) in a shallow jug and popped it into the fridge for an hour, until it was about half set but still pourable. Then I topped up the flat cupcakes with the jelly mix and put them back in the fridge for another two hours.

Fairy Floss Decoration:

What you need:

1 x Betty Crocker ready-made vanilla frosting.

Pink and blue food colouring

1 x small container of blue and pink fairy floss.

…because too much sweet stuff is never enough, right? I spooned around 3 tablespoons of frosting into two separate bowls and tinted one pale pink, and one pale blue. Load up your piping bag with one teaspoon of each colour at a time – one spoon pink, one spoon blue, one spoon pink… Then pipe a simple swirl onto the top of each jellied cupcake. Carefully add a little fairy floss for decoration, trying not to handle it too much to keep that flossy look.

The end result was all round ‘WIN’ so far as my family of taste-testers went. The texture of jelly with cake and fairy floss was gorgeous. Very, very sweet – but gorgeous. I might just make this mistake again…

** A word of caution – don’t add the fairy floss until you’re just about to serve up. It tends to melt at air temperature.