Cupcakes!

As you may have seen in a previous post, we'd gone on a trip to New York last summer and enjoyed a cupcake at the lovely Magnolia Bakery!  So this Christmas just gone, we got the Magnolia Bakery recipe book as a memento and i couldn't wait to bring some ideas back to Tea Street! 

Cupcakes are the perfect fashion accessory to compliment your cup of tea; just the right size for your plate and decorated in your own individual style. We decided to try the Vanilla cupcakes with the butter icing, a nice simple start but leaving the more colourful choices to the decorating!

It may have been a bit early to experiment but i stay on a largely gluten-free diet and therefore decided to add gluten-free flour/self-raising flour to the ingredients.  There may be a slight difference in the taste of gluten-free cakes but these were delicious!

We used plain cupcake cases with pink butter icing and then decorated the top with hundred and thousands (as inspired by the recipe book cover), edible glitter and dolly mixture - definitely one for the girls!  For the other, we used Squires Kitchen Shop's hot pink baroque cupcake cases with a white butter icing and chocolate sprinkles.

We took some to a birthday celebration and people were quick to dive in and complement the taste!  The pink icing ones were the most popular but the chocolate sprinkle ones were more to my style and therefore my favourite.

I really enjoyed making these and love turning my kitchen into a temporary bakery - there's something so homely about it!  I'd love to see what you're all making so feel free to post to Tea Street's facebook page!  To see the Magnolia Bakery recipe book in kindle format Click on the link below or go to my recommended items to the right.  If you'd like the paperback version, i found ours at Sainsbury's.