Pesky Purple Piping Bags

Many, many of you will be sitting here laughing at this when i say that at 23 years old, with many many years of baking and cake eating experience under my belt, i have only just learnt how to use a piping bag.
You, laughing person over there, are either:
a) an incredibly experienced baker who has taken baking up as either a full time career or hobby therefore could pipe a cake with your eyes shut because you have the time, patience and practice!
or
b) have never, ever attempted it in your life and think the people on the telly on great british bake off make it look soooo bloody easy surely YOU can do it too! Its just squeezing icing out a bag in a circle right?
RIGHT?!

So my mothers day baking treats this year came in the form of vanilla cupcakes from the magnolia bakery book- another chance to practice this pretty much flawless recipe, adding dry ingredients in 3rds i think has such clear advantages when making cupcake batter, much better than, and it pains me to say this, nigellas 'blitz it all in the processor' approach which i find can end up very runny. This mixture was so thick i almost panicked, but it was easy to put in the cases and baked in about 15 minutes!
I used mini cases and therefore opted for a small nozzle to pipe the icing which when comparing with the mini cupcakes in Lolas bakery a few days later i realised it wasn't essential, a normal/medium sized one works just as well and leaves less lines on the icing, however i twisted and held the bag properly this time, took my time and the icing was a good consistency (cream cheese icing- it holds so well) I also used raspberry flavoring and my absolute first choice for food coloring a lovely violet/lilac one i use on everything!
Not bad for my second attempt. My first attempt we forgot to put the nozzle into the bag before adding the icing. So ya know, baby steps and all that.

Holly x