Pink to make the Boys Wink Cupcakes & My first attempt at buttercream swirls!

This weekend I was supposed to be participating in another fondant cake decorating course but unfortunately it was cancelled so I decided to make these pink cupcakes instead. Also my husband was away on a course so I had the morning to myself and time to kill! The recipe for these cupcakes is from my cupcake calendar and is very simple:

Ingredients (I halved the recipe to make between 8-9 cupcakes)

1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup caster (superfine) sugar
1 cup self-raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Buttercream
about 1/2 cup butter (I used salted butter so didn´t add any salt but if you use unsalted butter, add a pinch of salt)(I added a bit more butter as it seemed to be very dry so was probably about 2/3 cup maybe!)
1 1/2 cups of icing sugar, sifted
a few drops of red or pink food colouring (I used 3 drops of red food colouring)
Silver balls/sprinkles or other to decorate

Method

1. Preheat oven to 175º C (350ºF) and place cupcake cases in cupcake tray.
2. Place all the cupcake ingredients in a large bowl and stir then using an electric hand whisk, whisk till well combined.
3. Place batter into cupcake cases and bake for 20 mins, then leave to cool.
4. To make the buttercream, whisk butter and icing sugar till it has a creamy texture (I´m not sure but seemed to take awhile, about 10 mins maybe)
5. Add food colouring and stir till blended and all the buttercream is the same colour.

When I took the cupcakes out of the oven, they had risen to a peak or dome in the middle (but apart from that they looked yummy!) Why is it that some cupcakes/muffins come out perfectly smooth and flat and others tend to rise in a peak or a dome? I think that maybe it´s because I put too much batter into each cupcake case and as this recipe contains a lot of rising agents, this caused the peaking!

I decided to have a go at piping buttercream swirls to improve my piping skills and because I´ve never done it before and I have seen how professional your cupcakes can look with this method on other people´s blogs. I used my new Wilton 1G icing nozzle although I had read that the Wilson 1M is the best for piping buttercream swirls. After filling a disposable icing bag with the buttercream, I set to trying to pipe the swirls from memory of what I´d read about buttercream swirls. They didn´t come out too badly but not as perfect as I´d have like so then I printed out the instructions from Cake Journal, which is a fantastic blog full of tips and tutorials about decorating cakes and tried following them. I didn´t have enough buttercream to complete the whole swirls and didn´t even have enough to decorate two of the cakes! Then I sprinkled some silver balls on just to finish them off nicely. They certainly aren´t as perfect or professional looking as I´d like but I think they aren´t too bad for a first attempt! They can only get better!