How to ice cupcakes

Benjamina shows you how to take your cupcakes to another level by filling and icing them. She demonstrates some easy techniques, even if you don't have a piping bag. This is the part of baking where you can really just let go and have fun with it. It's a time where you could be super creative and just try and lots of different things.

1. Cut a cone-shaped piece out of in the middle of the cupcake, but only going about halfway down the cake. Pop the cone out and fill the middle with lemon curd, jam, chocolate spread, or whatever you like. Put the top back on and you can ice them to cover the join. Or heap the filling up above the hole, cut the cake you've removed in half, and press them into the filling to make butterfly cakes.

Once they're filled you can cover them however you like, but I'm opting for buttercream. Fill a disposable piping bag with the icing, and then choose a different nozzles for different effects.

A flat ended nozzle will create a ribbony effect if you pipe it back and forth across the cake from top to bottom..

To create a rose, use a large star tip nozzle. Start piping in the middle of the cake and and work your way outwards in a circle.

For the classic tall cupcake, start at the outside edge of a cupcake, pipe around the cupcake in a spiral towards the centre. When you reach the top, pull up quickly to finish the swirl.