The Royal Wedding is just days away and all over the papers and the 24 hour news channels. Surprisingly an offer of free union jack cupcake cases brought out the patriot in me. (Available from Lakeland who I am not sponsored by. I just wish I was.) So I made the most British cupcake I could think of: a mini victoria sponge cake with jam and buttercream icing. And just for good measure I iced them in red, white and blue (or more accurately dark pink, cream and blue!)

Cupcake ingredients (Recipe from the Primrose Bakery)

• 110g unsalted butter
• 225g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 150g self-raising flour
• 150g plain flour
• 120ml milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• A small jar of raspberry jam

Buttercream icing ingredients

• 110g unsalted butter
• 60ml milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 500g icing sugar
• Blue and red food colouring

Bring your butter and milk to room temperature before you start. Heat your oven to 180 degrees C, 160 degrees C if it’s a fan oven, 350 degrees F or gas mark 4. Cream the butter and sugar together until the mixture is smooth. They suggest using an electric hand mixer but I have to admit I do this by hand until my arm aches. Then add the eggs one by one and stir thoroughly into the mix between additions.
Sieve the flours together in one bowl and in a separate jug combine the milk and vanilla extract. Add a third of the flours to the butter mix and beat well, then add a third of the milk and mix in. Continue until all are combined in one bowl. Transfer the mix into your patriotic cupcake cases until they are about two thirds full. The recipe claimed it would make 12 cupcakes but I ended up with 18. Then bake for 25 minutes until golden brown. Check with a skewer to make sure it comes out clean. Remove from the oven and cool in the tin for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

Once they are completely cool use a sharp knife to cut a small hole in the centre of the cake. Remove the piece (and eat it) and fill the space with jam. To make the buttercream icing simply sieve the icing sugar and then combine roughly half with the butter, milk and vanilla extract and beat until smooth. Again you can use an electric mixture, beat by hand or a combination of the two which I opted for. Once this is smooth add the rest of the icing sugar in batches and continue to beat until it has a creamy texture.

Divide the icing into three separate bowls and place one to one side. This is your white (or more accurately cream) icing. Add a drop of food colouring to one bowl and beat thoroughly into the icing. This will give you a pale pink or blue colour so continue to add a drop at a time and beat it through until you are at the colour you want. You’ll never get brilliant red and blue from a cream icing but I think you get close enough.

And there they are: red, white and blue cupcakes for the Royal Wedding or any other celebration that could do with a mini victoria sponge injection!