Well, look at me - I made cupcakes!

There were two occasions I was supposed to be at this weekend, one was a picnic and the other was an afternoon tea, and so on Friday I made cupcakes.  However, still incubating my own little cupcake and having some dodgy blood pressure readings resulted in Friday night in hospital and a promise that I would rest on the Saturday, so I did make it to the afternoon tea (on the basis it was at our friends house in our street), but not to the picnic (which was a shame).
However, I frosted the cupcakes for the occasion and took them along.
I made cookies and cream cupcakes - these were somewhat shamelessly 'inspired' by the cookies and cream cupcakes we had from the Pet Lamb Patisserie girls the previous week, and I also made black bottomed cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook that I received as part of my leaving present from work.
Here they are:

Cupcakes!

It's been a while since I have baked, but it's been ages since I have made cupcakes... Mainly as now having a toddler and a new one on the way means that my time is more limited.  However, events conspired to inspire me to bake cupcakes this weekend and these are the result.  I made some cupcakes for friends and their family, I made some as a gift for our friends who are new parents, and some as a gift for a variety of people having a joint birthday party.  I enjoyed making them and the recipients seemed to enjoy being given them, so a good time had by all.

Birthday mini-cupcakes

These were baked as a birthday gift for a friend. Vanilla cupcakes with yellow vanilla icing, birthday letter candles and some small sugar flowers.

Staycation Mini-Cupcakes

It's 11am, it's coffee time at work - an social tradition of which the days are now numbered in its present daily form. However, one thing is guaranteed, that the number in attendance will increase exponentially when the work 'cake' is included in the invite. The unwritten rule, is that people are welcome to contribute offerings to share to celebrate birthdays, work anniversaries, holidays, retirement, moving on, moving up, pregnancy (announcement and return), and the welcome of new colleagues, or visitors, plus any other excuses that can be thought of to share biscuits, cakes and dodgy produce from foreign climes.

However, these mini-cupcakes were my contribution from our August staycation. The choices were vanilla cupcakes iced with pink icing and appropriate decorative accessories, chocolate cupckes with chocolate icing, and iced fancies which I made on a whim from the surplus of chocolate cake mixture.