Cutesy cake decorating to entertain the littlies

Keep little hands busy on a rainy afternoon with these cute fishy cupcakes from the Two Sisters Crafting blog. They can be easily assembled with shop-bought cupcakes and icing so that the kids can get stuck straight into the fun part; decorating (and eating, of course). Ingredients: Plain cupcakes 170g (6 3/4oz) softened butter 225g (8oz) icing sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract a drop of food colouring (optional) To decorate: M&Ms Candy eyes or mini marshmallows Directions: 1 First make (or buy!) a batch of plain cupcakes. If you are feeling energetic here is Donal Skehan's excellent basic cupcake recipe. 2 Make buttercream icing by beating the softened butter, the icing sugar, vanilla extract and food colouring (if using) together with a electric mixer on low until fully incorporated. 3 Separate the M&M’s by colour. This was from a large bag of M&M’s. You’ll need about 15 M&M’s for the scales of each cupcake, and 2 reds for the fish lips. 4 Ice the cupcakes with the buttercream then make the first row of M&M 'scales' down the middle of the cupcake. 5 Continue adding rows until you cover half of the cupcake with M&M scales. 6 Complete the fishy cupcake with red M&M lips and eyes. These eyes are edible eye decorations but mini marshmallows with a dot of food colouring for the pupil also works. You can play with patterns and colours.