Chocolate Chip Fairy Cakes

So last Friday was the start of 'summer hours', a perk of the publishing industry whereby you can leave work at 1pm on Fridays. To celebrate the start of this grand tradition I knocked up a batch of fairy cakes to take in for my work colleagues. Fairy cakes are one of the easiest things to make, brilliant for the novice baker to try, and you get to have lots of fun decorating them!

Preheat your oven to 180°C/gas 4 and line cake trays with brightly-coloured cake cases. Cream together 6oz butter with 5oz sugar until light and smooth. Add 3 beaten eggs and 6oz self-raising flour. Finally stir in 100g chocolate chips. Spoon the mixture evenly between 24 cases and bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes, until lightly golden on top.

To make the icing melt 100g chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water, add a few drops of milk and some icing sugar until you get a nice smooth consistency.                       
 Tip: Unlike cake mixtures where the quantities are crucial, icing can be made to suit your taste, I used a dark Green & Black's chocolate so the icing sugar helps sweeten it. 
Spoon the icing over each cake and decorate with anything you want! I used glitter on some and some edible flowers on the others.

They went down a treat at work, the perfect thing for Friday's elevenses. And the best bit? When someone asked 'what's the glitter stuff', and I said 'glitter'...