Servings: Makes 12 large or 24 small buns

Cooking time: 30 minutes

What you’ll need

12 hole bun tray

Ingredients

Buns

• 110g plain flour
• 50g cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• 200g caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 100g buttermilk or natural yogurt
• 50g sunflower oil
• 110g hot water
• Tiny pinch salt

Vanilla Buttercream

• 125g Soft butter
• 125g Icing sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Small Chocolate chips or silver balls to decorate

Method

1. Heat oven to 180C / 160C Fan
2. Sieve the dry ingredients together into a large bowl.
3. Break the egg into another bowl and add the buttermilk, oil and hot water and mix well together.
4. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and whisk together until just combined.
5. Pour the mixture into a jug ( it is a wet mixture ) and fill the bun cases two thirds full.
6. Bake for 10 – 15 minutes ( or a bit longer for larger buns ) until set.
7. Leave to cool on a wire rack.
8. To make the icing, whisk together the icing sugar, butter and vanilla until really light and fluffy.
9. Then using piping bag and plain nozzle pipe the icing onto the buns. Keeping it in the centre and tall. Just use a spoon if you don’t have a piping bag.
10. Decorate with chocolate chips or silver balls for eyes