Vanilla Lilac Cupcakes

Lilac and Vanilla cupcakes with buttercream frosting

I signed up for a cake decorating class.  It's a 4-week course at my local craft store.  For the first lesson, I needed to bring 6 un-iced cupcakes. I wanted a clean, easy and easy-to-make-dairy free recipe for simple vanilla cupcakes.  

I found this wonderful Williams Sonoma recipe for vanilla cupcakes.  I replaced the butter with Earth Balance buttery sticks and I used my lilac sugar, which by now has a wonderful fragrant flavor and aroma. 

The cupcakes baked evenly, gave me a soft yet structured crumb and had a lovely combination of the vanilla and the lilac flavor. 

Now, on to the icing. I signed up for this class because my skills with a pastry bag have always been a little shaky, so I wanted some kind of formal training to make my baked goods look pretty as well as tasty. 

We really started with the basics, mainly straight lines, wavy lines, stars and rosettes.  We mixed two different colors and played around with the star tips.  

I think I did okay for a first timer...