Oh Crumbs !

 DEAR FAIRY FOLLOWERS, 

This week the weather has been rather wet and gloomy at Betty's Cottage and so we decided to cheer ourselves up with a bit of baking. Lolly and Buncle were united in thinking that Cherry Topped Chocolate Fairy Cakes would provide the fairy glow we all needed now that the clocks have gone back and in a fairy trice the cake mixture was being spooned into the paper cases ( fairies don't hang about when they sniff some sugar in the air . )

 Buncle decided to take a rest on the mixer half way through the process ( waiting for me to leave the kitchen so that she could fly down into the bowl and taste the mixture ) but I know her fairy ways and
asked her to prepare the tin for the second batch.

 Once the cakes were in the oven the fairies were put in charge of timing ... a bit of a hot job on the top of the Aga but they didn't complain ...

 and once they were cooked they were given the jobs of  icing and cherry cutting .

 I was just thinking how unusually efficient and well behaved Lolly and Buncle were being as Lolly carefully arranged the cherries on the tops ...

 and Buncle  tested for the shiniest of the cherries ...

 and Lolly  dusted on the icing sugar ...

 When a Cocoa Fairy flew in to see what percentage of cocoa solids were in the chocolate we were using ( she can smell a 70% bar from TWO miles away for you fairy followers that record fairy facts in your notebooks. )

 She seemed quite satisfied with the quality of the fairy cakes we had produced and was happy with the depth of icing when she lightly jumped on  the surface of each one. We gave her a cake to take away with her and decided to eat the rest quickly before more Cocoa Fairies appeared !

Just as I was congratulating myself on what an uneventful day we had and how well trained my fairies were turning out , I bit into the last cake to find a mouthful of duster !! Yes, the very duster that Lolly had been using to dust on the icing sugar - it had obviously fallen into the second batch of mixture and she hadn't noticed it was missing...

 Apart for the dry old duster taste the rest of the cake was very yummy and for a full five minutes Lolly was most  apologetic ... as I was leaving the kitchen I spied the fairies having a last run about in the sugar...

 and when I came back in all the washing up was magically done and Lolly's duster was free of crumbs
 and safely back in her apron pocket.
I am just relieved that the Cocoa fairy went away with a duster free cake or we may have had our license to bake True Fairy Cakes taken away from us !

HAPPY FAIRY SPOTTING , love from,
                                                                     Betty x