magnolia cupcakes

I volunteered to make cupcakes for Ant's sister Emily's 21st. It was quite an undertaking but at the same time really fun and rewarding. Lots of people from work (Berni, Corrina, Carol etc.) have asked me how I made them.

I found the recipe for the cupcakes through the vogue forums, it was voted one of the best cupcake recipes and seemed to fit my purposes pretty well. I wanted something pretty rich and dense, i wasn't concerned about how healthy they'd be because we wouldn't be eating the entire batch between 3 people or anything. I also wanted a recipe with a good icing recipe and Magnolia's recipe was perfect.

I decided to use a piping bag to ice the cupcakes, to give it ago and in the hopes that they would look really professional - they looked great!

Cupcake recipe link

Notes: Confectioners sugar is a fancy word for soft icing sugar

I used strawberry oil in place of the vanilla essence for the icing because I thought it would be a nice different surprise and go well with the pink icing. You can use flavouring oil for icings made from an oil base - butter etc. 3 drops or half a teaspoon was plenty.

Tips:
I used three different pattypan colours - metallic silver, metallic brown and metallic pink i thought that these colours would be funky and a modern touch.

Using the piping bag for this particular icing recipe was fantastic and really easy. I filled the bag up and followed the pattypans from the outer edge of the cupcake to the centre. Easy and suprisingly quick!