For the cupcakes themselves, I just baked plain vanilla, following a simple recipe of; 110g butter, 110g sugar, 110g flour and two eggs (makes a batch of 10-12 depending on size!)
Start by creaming the butter and sugar together until soft, and slowly add the eggs a little bit at a time, and stir with a wooden spoon until they are fully mixed in. Next fold in the flour a bit at a time until the mixture is smooth and has a dropping consistency. I know a lot of people prefer to use electric wisks, but I really do think you get the best results by mixing by hand, (plus if you're going to let a machine do everything you may as well just buy cupcakes and not bother making them in the first place!)
For Christmas, my mum got me this amazing plastic piping syringe which came with 20 different nozzles and piping heads, which makes decorating so much easier! Obviously, not all of you will have one of these to hand, but it's just as effective to make a piping bag yourself by rolling up a cone of grease proof paper, snipping off the end and piping through! I made simple butter cream icing by mixing 150g butter with 250g of icing sugar, before piping onto each cupcake. I then used a silver glitter spray to add a bit of sparkle before decorating with some sugar stars!
If you're not feeling this ambitious though, you could always decorate with "water icing" instead, which is much easier to do (especially if children are involved). To decorate cakes like the picture shown above (middle), then simply mix icing sugar with a small amount of water until you get the consistency you desire (be warned, a very small bit of water goes a very long way!), then simply spread over your cooled cupcakes and add some lovely sprinkles for decoration!
Let me know in the comments below what you think of these cupcakes... I will try my best to do a post every single day next week so feel free to request anything you want to see! As usual, I'd love it if you'd follow me on bloglovin' and don't forget to check out my twitter and instagram!
