Vanilla Cupcakes

I had to bring a contribution to my friends' bank holiday barbecue, and automatically assigned to cakes, I decided on some simple cupcakes.

I used a new recipe, it can be found here - http://www.joyofbaking.com/VanillaCupcakes.html

They came out perfectly, evenly risen and had a gorgous fluffy texture.

I wanted pink buttercream icing, and decided red food colouring would probably give me a better pink than pink itself.  But as you can see from the pictures.. I had a little trouble with that and ended up with peach icing.  But I think this was because I was using buttercream, which turns naturally a yellow colour from the butter, and yellow + red = orange, probably should have realised this beforehand.  Icing disaster number one, now for disaster number two.  I had actually bought a bargain £1.29 piping bag with plastic nozzles to try out.  My first attempt at piping... not good.  Although I think partly because the nozzle I was using was too small for the effect I was aiming for.  So I gave that up, and went back to spreading with a good old knife, and it looked much better.

And then a 40 minute drive in the car, praying they would not fall everywhere and lose their icing.  Luckily, the majority of them did just that, but the four in a smaller tin ended up everywhere, still tasted great though!

I also made some yummy lemon drizzle squares for the barbecue, will post them very soon.