I think I’m in denial that its October already, that its dark by 7pm and that I have 101 buttons to fasten on coats before we can walk to the park over crunching leaves. Is summer over already? Is it really nearly Halloween and Christmas and Beans second birthday?
She knows the way to the park now and drags me there by the hand, little legs skipping along the pavement all the way up the hill. When we get there she looks for the ice cream van. We miss the ice cream van and long hot afternoons with bare feet and sand between our toes.

So when I dug through my goodie bag from my night at the MADs I decided to try to bring summer back with a little help from Appliances Online and their cute jar of cupcake ingredients. The jar contained all the dry ingredients needed to whip up a batch of cupcakes so yesterday that’s exactly what we did. One huge plus point to these cupcakes is that it’s a genius way to serve to a toddler, minimal crumby mess!

Pretend it’s summer again ice cream cone cupcakes.

In the jar:

65g caster sugar

60g Light soft brown sugar

125g self raising flour

25g Chocolate chips

Wet ingredients we added:

1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)

2 medium eggs

125g butter or margarine, softened at room temperature

2 tbsp milk, to loosen

Buttercream ‘ice cream’ icing:

175g icing sugar

75g butter

Glacé ‘strawberry sauce’ icing:

50g icing sugar

1 tsp cold water

1 drop of red food colouring

Then:

* Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.

Now this was only the second time ever that I have baked with a eager toddler wielding spoons and dying to dig her fists into the raw mixture so we cheated a bit. I threw all of the ingredients, wet and dry, into a big bowl and mixed like crazy until it all came together which is much quicker and easier than creaming the sugar and butter together first when you have a mini assistant. And the cakes still come out great – win win!

* So, mix everything together until you have a smooth mixture and then allow your toddler five minutes to fling bits of it around while she helps.

* While she was busy trying to get blobs to hit the ceiling I had time to get everything ready to go into the oven.

* To get the cones to stay upright in the muffin tray you need to line each hole with a large square of foil, place the cone in the middle and then fold and scrunch the foil to keep the cone secure and steady.

* Fill each cone with the cake mixture to just below the top to allow for rising.

* Bake on the top shelf of the oven for 20-25 minutes until a skewer (or in our case, piece of raw spaghetti  comes out clean when pushed into the middle of a cake.

* Leave to cool in the tray for 10 minutes before transferring to a rack to cool completely.

* Marvel that the cones stayed perfect and didn’t melt into a soggy mess or burn to a crisp.

* Put the toddler to bed.

* Panic because you can’t find your piping bag anywhere and you really need it.

* Have a cup of tea and decide to use the back of a spoon to spread the icing instead.

* Shower with sprinkles.

* Eat. Preferably while sat next to a radiator with all the lights on so that you can pretend you are enjoying a bright, warm summers evening.