Children in Need - Pudsey cupcakes and cookies!

It is that time of year again, Children in Need is nearly upon us so I thought I would get in the kitchen and bake for a good cause. Bakingmad mentioned on tiwtter that they wanted some bloggers to take up the Pudsey cupcake challenge, and I jumped at the chance.

Allinson Flour have teamed up with supermarket giant Asda to help raise money for this year’s BBC Children in Need appeal. To support the appeal Allinson will be donating 15p from the sale of special packs of their Nature Friendly Plain White and Self Raising flours to the charity. The special packs featuring the iconic Pudsey bear character, are due to go on sale in November and are available exclusively at Asda supermarkets. So next time you’re out shopping be sure to look out for Pudsey in the home baking aisle!
Children in Need is a fabulous cause, if you want to read a bit more about where the money goes check out the BBC website.

Pudsey Cupcakes

The lovely people at Baking Mad kindly sent me all the neccessary ingredients to make these pudsey cupcakes.

For the sponge:

225g Butter

225g Unrefined Golden Caster Sugar (Billington's)

4 Happy Eggs

225g Self Raising Flour (Allinson Nature Friendly)

half a tsp Silver Spoon Cakecraft Natural Vanilla Extract

For the decoration:

500g Icing Sugar (Silver Spoon Homegrown)

160g Unsalted Butter softened

50ml JUST MILK Whole

half a tsp Silver Spoon Cakecraft Natural Vanilla Extract

Yellow Food Colour (Silver Spoon Cakecraft)

Coloured Choco Beans (Silver Spoon Cakecraft)

Writing Icing (Silver Spoon Cakecraft) Black

These cupcakes really are so simple to make.

Start by creaming together the butter and sugar until pale, then add the eggs one at a time beating until mixed. Then gently fold in the flour.

Divide into cupcake or muffin cases and bake at 180 for 25-30 minutes.

For the frosting use an electric whisk to mix together the butter and icing sugar then add the milk and vanilla essence and whisk until light and fluffy, then add a few drops of yellow food colouring to achieve a bright yellow frosting.

The use a palette knife (or like me a butter knife) to spread the icing onto the cupcakes, place choco beans on the left side to make his signature patch, and then using the black writing icing, give him a face!

I also popped to Lakeland (as I do most lunchtimes) and noticed they had a lot of great Children in Need baking things! So I decided to rustle up some cookies as well.
I followed the recipe from The Pink Whisk's website. The cookie dough was quite hard to roll out but the cookies themselves were absolutely delicious.
I covered them in rolled out yellow fondant and used white writing icing to outline his trademark patch. I then decided to use hundreds and thousands to make the spots as the chocobeans were a little big for my cookies.
I simply squished the hundreds and thousands into the fondant when it was still freshly applied and it worked a treat!
I used the black writing icing for his face again and voila! Pusdey-tastic!

I raised £22.50 for Children in Need, I hope to double it next year! Have you been baking for Children in Need?