Friday Night's Quick Cupcakes

Similar to the need to have “Autopilot” quick meals on hand, I find it invaluable to keep one or two Gluten Free cake mixes in the cupboard for fast and stress free sweet fixes. Two of my favourite are Basco’s ‘Golden Butter Cake’ and Well and Good’s ‘Chocolate Mud Cake Mix’.

Last Friday night Libby had a friend stay over. The first thing I did when I walked in the door was switch on the oven to preheat and then grab my mixer out of the pantry. Vanilla cupcakes were my choice for quick and easy treats. I like  Basco's ‘Golden Butter Cake’ because it has a nice flavour, performs consistently well and the end product looks and tastes like a real cupcake. I have made trays of these to take to school and no one ever picked they were gluten free. I even had a parent ask me for the recipe!

The girls were upstairs playing in Libby’s room. Before the girls even had a chance to come down and complain about being hungry, I had these little babies mixed, baked and out of the oven cooling. Definitely in the running for Supermum of the year now....



I love cupcakes because you can cook them in less than 15 minutes, and the kids are not emotionally scarred from having to wait an hour for a full size cake to cook. The cupcakes also cool quickly so you can ice them within the hour.

What I also like about this mix is the price. I think I usually pay about $3.50 in IGA or Woolworth’s for the packet. For some reason I can’t explain, the Basco Vanilla Cupcake box is about $1 dearer so I just buy this one and make cupcakes with it. It comes with an icing satchel, which is a nice bonus. Basco's are made by Green's General Foods. Thank you Green's for not charging ridiculously inflated prices for your cake mixes. At $3.50 these are comparable to gluten full Green's Cake mixes!

I like to make little cupcakes for the kid’s lunch boxes. They get to feel special that their mum has made a recess jealousy inducing treat. I keep the portion size small so their diet is in balance. I like to use patty cases with a 3-4 cm base at max. Most bakery bought muffins or cakes would be 3 to 4 times this size!

You can make up a batch, ice them and pop the cakes in the freezer on a plate for 1 - 2 hours. Once frozen, wrap individually in gladwrap, store in the freezer door and pop one in the lunch box when needed. The great thing about a frozen cupcake is that it will survive the journey to school, through the playground and into the bag racks, with icing intact. By recess it is defrosted but not squashed beyond recognition. Decor have these great little containers that can fit two little cupcakes. The container also has a little fork attached to the lid for when I fill it with sliced watermelon or fruit salad. Just love them and bought mine from Woolworths for about $3.50!

I also really like Well and Good's ‘Chocolate Mud Cake Mix’.  It is a little dearer than the Basco mix but we are talking CHOCOLATE MUD CAKE PEOPLE so I don't mind too much. I usually source this mix in my local IGA store at Ashmore City, but I think I have seen it in Coles as well. It is rich but not too dense (exactly how I like my men!) and is full of chocolaty goodness. I have made this cake lots of times and it's been consistently great.  The product is gluten free and dairy free too. I baked this mix in Christmas cupcake cases, dusted with icing sugar, for our swim club’s Christmas Party. We have a few kids in the club who cannot eat gluten or dairy. The look on their faces when they found out there was party food they could eat was priceless! Everyone else just tucked in oblivious to the gluten free status of the cakes and kept asking if there was any more...

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