Pretty in pink

Isn't this one of the prettiest things you ever laid eyes on?

I made these beautiful (di-licious) hydrangea cupcakes for my friend's daughter's baptism.

The vanilla cupcakes with vanilla and raspberry buttercream were all the more special thanks to Neilsen-Massey Madagascar Bourbon Pure Vanilla Extract. I splurged on a bottle at Simon Johnson a few weeks ago after talking for half an hour with one of their sales team about how important a great tasting cake was. She assured me that my cakes would reach another dimension with this amazing vanilla. Well, she was right. These were by far the most amazing vanilla cupcakes I have ever made. The perfume, the taste - just di-licious!

I hope I can continue to produce cakes to this standard when I one day put up my own shingle. I have been consistently underwhelmed by the offerings of cupcake shops and wonder if the so-so cake is a product of the production process that making bulk cakes requires. Its something I'll need to think about. And could I afford to use such high quality ingredients (and would customers be prepared to pay for them?)

I must also thank Glorious Treats for her amazingly generous tutorial on creating the buttercream hydrangeas. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to make them one day.

When I was asked to make the baptism cupcakes my brief was simply vanilla cupcakes with buttercream and a pink and white colour scheme - the design was up to me. I didn't want to just do classic swirls, I wanted to create something pretty. That's when I remembered the hydrangeas and the rest, as they say, is history.

I used what I call a soft buttercream - it has a higher ratio of butter to icing sugar and doesn't form a crust. I think it allows you to enjoy the flavours of the buttercream without the overwhelming sweetness of a traditional buttercream frosting.

I used the madagascar vanilla for the white buttercream and sieved french raspberry jam to flavour the raspberry buttercream. (You have to sieve the seeds out of the jam because they block up the piping tip!)

I just adore these cupcakes and hope you do too. Pretty in pink for a beautiful little girl's baptism, and di-licious to boot!