Craving cupcakes

I've always enjoyed baking - cakes and breads being my speciality. I've even successfully made batches of cookies, although they are more work. I used to bake cakes every weekend for my mother's ceramics group or occasional tea-time treats for neighbours.

When I haven't baked for many months I get this overwhelming need to bake for people. It's no fun baking for myself.

So, I decided to do the cupcake thing; I really like doing cupcakes because icing each one individually is fun - albeit time consuming - and each cupcake recipient gets their own personalise mini-cake.

This was the first batch I made (photo opposite). A few days later I made another 18 to take into work for my once-a-week Thursday meeting there, which fell on Valentines Day. They were chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing and pink hearts.

Two days later I made another 2 batches of some 48 cupcakes to take to the Valentines Nite Race for our Adventure Racing Club runners. These were vanilla cupcakes with either pink, white or pale purple icing with hearts and stars piped in various icing shades. It was such good fun they looked fabulous (I forgot to take a photo!) and they were devoured.

My craving to create cupcakes has been satiated; for a while anyway.