Birthday Cupcakes

I love making homemade cakes as a gift.  On Saturday I went to a friend's house to celebrate her 40th, so I made cupcakes to take with me.  Pink sparkly cupcakes, of course!

I used fairy cake cases rather than cupcake cases, to keep the cakes a reasonable size - sometimes I find that cupcakes made in larger papers, although they look impressive, are really too much to eat in one go!

I used a standard vanilla sponge mix to make my cakes, and baked them for around 15 minutes or so until golden.  I only half-filled the cases so I would have a reasonably level surface at the top of the papers.

I made 20 cupcakes in total and spent a lot of time adding sparkles, hearts and stars.

My latest toy is this set of star-shaped cutters!  I used these to stamp out stars from white and pink coloured fondant icing.  I'm sure these cute little stars will be popping up frequently in my baking in the run-up to the festive period!  I'm planning on covering my Christmas cake in red and green stars.

I had great fun making these cupcakes - can you tell?!

Best Wishes
Debbie