My birthday was a few months ago and I wanted to make some pink vanilla cupcakes.  This was largely because I had recently purchased not only pink cupcake wrappers, but a tub of pink sparkly sprinkles.  I used this Magnolia Cupcakes recipe.  I didn't have any self-rising flour, so I used only all-purpose... 

Overall, this recipe was really easy to make.  The biggest issue I seem to encounter with cupcakes is making the the same size!  I can never seem to put the same amount of batter into all the cups.

I tried using a small ice cream scoop for these, but it still didn't pour evenly!  They didn't look too bad once they baked though... although there are pretty big size differences in some!  I figured they were fixable with frosting...

While the cakes were cooling, I mixed up the Magnolia buttercream frosting from the recipe posted above.  I used a few drops of red food coloring to get the right shade of pink.

Then I prepared all my sprinkles - I also used some Betty Crocker "cupcake gems" to embellish the tops of the cupcakes.  I found these at Stop & Shop a few months back and had been really excited to use them!

And voila!  Birthday cupcakes fit for a twenty-five year old.  These were really fun to make, and they an excellent accompaniment to a glass of Prosecco ;)   However, the cake was definitely dry, which was more or less offset by the frosting but something I'd like to avoid next time.  I'm not sure if this was because I used all-purpose instead of self-rising flour, or if my ratios were a bit off, but I'll have to experiment with this next time I use this recipe!