Rainy day cakes

Sunday was a washout weather-wise, so we retreated to our cosy kitchen and made something yummy and sunny-looking. We based our baking, rather loosely, on a recipe for gluten-free and dairy-free cupcakes that I'd previously found on the internet. We began by hauling out all the necessary ingredients, and then my children's challenge was to sort them into two groups - wet and dry -  while I set the oven to heat up to 180c.

Ingredients:

Dry:

125g gluten-free flour

60g ground almonds

1 tsp baking  powder

half tsp bicarbonate of soda

30g unrefined sugar

half tsp cinnamon

pinch of salt

zest of 1 clementine

Wet: 

3 eggs

100ml olive oil

juice of 2 clementines

1 medium carrot, finely grated (add just before baking)

I let my children measure out the ingredients into two bowls by themselves; one for the wet, and another for the dry. Of course, this all got very messy - but that's half the fun, right?

They combined the wet ingredients with the dry, and then stirred in the grated carrot. Having counted out twelve paper cases, they spooned some of the mixture into each (about 1 tablespoon per cake). We found we had enough to make fourteen cupcakes in the end.

After baking them in the oven for about 12 minutes, we let the cakes cool on a rack for an hour before smothering them in icing and adding a final and delicious flourish - fresh raspberries and blueberries. Suddenly, our Sunday was looking a lot more cheery.