More decorated Lemon Cupcakes

September is a busy month for me baking wise - everyone seems to have their birthdays this month! Next up was my lovely friend Jenny's birthday...

A group of us went out to a local Tapas restaurant to celebrate...the food was AMAZING...the service was SLOW apparently due to them being short staffed. It was a shame this had to happen on Jenny's birthday but everyone seemed to enjoy the food and the company and Jenny soon perked up when we went to a bar afterwards and realised it was cheap drinks for freshers week...we made the most of this!

I made the same recipe for Jenny's cupcakes as I did for my Mum's but decorated them with little baby blue and pink butterflies and large white shimmery butterflies. I originally got the idea from Katiecakes' blog...don't they look cute? But decided to jazz them up a little by adding extra shimmer, little metallic balls, large white butterflies and a dusting of glitter.

Decorated Lemon Cupcakes

Its my Mum's birthday on Monday and since getting into baking a few years ago I always bake her something. This year I thought I'd make her her favourite..lemon cupcakes which I decorated with pretty purple, gold and white sugar flowers.

My parents came up for the day yesterday. Originally myself and the boyfriend were going to go and visit them for a long weekend buuutttt I ended up treating myself to a car!! Yep I couldn't cope with the Honda any longer..I tried for three horrendous months to get to grips with it but I just didnt feel happy driving it..so I sold it and have now bought a lovely brand new shiny white c1...I love it! The car garage was quite a way from our house so my parents offered to come to see us and to drop us off at the car garage to pick the new car up...very helpful indeed! Well I survived the drive back home...it was nerve wracking driving a brand new car down the motor way for the first time..I'd been worrying all week! But I've been out in it a couple of times since and am really enjoying driving it...hooray!

Anyway back to cupcakes! I normally use Rachel Allen's recipe for lemon cupcakes but as I was so impressed with the vanilla cupcake recipe from the Love Bakery book, I thought I would try their lemon cupcake recipe as well..I think the quantities are quite similar anyway. It produced lovely fluffy and moist cupcakes which I then decorated with the Rachel Allen recipe for lemon butter cream. I spent most of my evenings last week making all the little flowers and butterflies and had many occasions where I had to explain to people why my hands were bright purple in colour! I love the finished cakes though and think the purple works really well. My Mum was very impressed and insisted my Dad took lots of pics for her before she ate any!