Decorating cupcakes on a Sunday morning.

/ tags Afternoon Tea, Cupcakes, Manchester

For a girl with a passion for cake, decorating cupcakes was the perfect way to spend a Sunday morning.

Thanks to my Sister-in-law, who bought me a cupcake decorating class for my Birthday, and a mix up with venues that saw me being able to take a friend with me, I spent a happy few hours dabbling in the world of sugar craft at Trifles Bakery.

We were treated to tea and cake on arrival, which got proceedings off to an excellent start.

With the focus being on decoration, the bakery provided ready made cupcakes and buttercream. This meant we could enjoy all the fun of decorating without any of the preparation, and with minimal tidying up afterwards. It was the ideal chance to experiment with different tools and techniques.

Firstly we were shown how to create a royal swirl with buttercream. It’s a technique frequently used for cupcakes because it’s simple (in theory), yet very effective.

The most important thing is to get the buttercream to the right consistency. I’ve had trouble with this before so was glad to have it done for me.

Once it’s in the piping bag, warm the icing by moving it around in your hands. This makes it flow through the nozzle easily.

Starting from the centre of the cake, make a spiral motion with the icing until you’ve covered the whole thing. Easy right?

Well, kind of, but it does take a bit of practice to hold the icing bag at the right height and get an even flow of icing to stop the swirl breaking in the middle.

Top Tip: If you get it wrong, tip the cupcake upside down over the icing bowl. The icing will fall off, ready to try again. Obvious when you know!

After a chance to practise, we were shown how to make decorations including a fondant rose. I’ll need a few more attempts to get it perfect.

We had access to every colour, stamp, sprinkle, glitter, and even images printed on to edible paper.

With the swirly cakes decorated it was on to the fondant toppers. These were much easier and simply involved using a cutter to cut a circle of icing, sticking it to the cake with buttercream, and letting the imagination run wild with the decoration.