As I’m sure you’ve all noticed, the cupcake craze is well and truly in full swing. Although I haven’t jumped on the bandwagon hook line and sinker, every now and then I get the urge to bake and decorate some little morsels of cupcake prettiness. When this urge takes me, I never go past Nigella Lawson’s cupcake recipe from her fabulous book How to be a Domestic Goddess.

The thing I love about this recipe is that it’s so simple – you pretty much throw the whole thing in your food processor, whizz it up, put it in the tins and off you go. It’s funny how something so dinky starts off looking gloopy like this.

But what do you know, a few short minutes later and you have little mounds of golden-brown cakey goodness. Does anyone else find their cupcakes form little peaks like these ones?

Not that I’m complaining, because then you can cut those bits off and dip them into the icing without having to wait until all of the cakes are ready (which is one of the best things about baking cupcakes).

Now, the fiddly piping bit is not really a strength of mine, but I like to think I’m getting there. I set to with my piping set and my icing, or as the Americans like to call it’ ‘Buttercream frosting.’ I did some googling for suggested recipes for the icing and put together my own version, consisting of:
1 cup of icing sugar
1 cup of softened butter
A squeeze of lemon juice – personally, I find this helps cut through the sweetness a little.

And, Bob’s your uncle…there you have it, a plate of iced pink-and-white goodness to make one feel proud and enjoy with a cup of tea. Or, as my darling sister once proclaimed, ‘those cakes look like a fairy threw up on them.’ Charming.

Enjoy!