Christmas Cupcakes- vegan

These are pale green- you can use whatever festive colours you like.

Here's a very simple recipe that's perfect for entertaining over the festive season or to make with your little ones; I made them to take to a get-together at a friend's house. If you don't like the richness of fruit cake and marzipan but you love Christmas-y flavours then this could even be your Christmas cake solution: make double the amount and and display them on a tiered cake stand.

Makes 12 muffin-sized cakes:
400g self-raising flour
4 tsps baking powder
200g soft light btrown sugar
1 tab sultanas
1 tab chopped glace cherries
1 tab candied peel
1 tap mixed spice
150ml organic sunflower oil (or rice bran oil, or coconut oil)
400ml unsweetened plant milk (I used soya)
For the topping:
12 mini candy canes (I got mine in Poundland) or similar festive decorations
Icing sugar (make sure it's from beet not cane sugar because white cane sugar is filtered using bone charcoal)
Natural green food colouring (make sure it's veggie- most of them are, but you never know...)
lemon juice

• Combine all the dry ingredients well in a large mixing bowl. Make sure you don't  leave any lumps of sugar.
• Combine the wet ingredients in another bowl.
• Beat the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.
• Spoon into muffin tins/ moulds and bake in an oven preheated to 180C for about 15 minutes, until cooked through but not over browned on top.
• While the cakes are baking, you can make the  icing by mixing the icing sugar with a few drops of lemon juice and food colouring. Get it so that it will drip a little over the edge of each cake, but not so that it all runs off!
• When cool, frost and decorate as desired.