When my friend Cheryl asked me if I would bake some cupcakes for her daughter's 12th birthday with 'Happy 12th Birthday Megan' iced on them I hesitated for a moment. Fairy cakes (as I knew them when I was a child) are easy to make and I've made them enough times before but those glorious cakes with billowing buttercream icing so perfectly iced sitting prettily in the shop cabinet, they were a different matter. Megan had her heart set on cupcakes for her birthday, her mum told me, and I suddenly felt the enormity of the responsibility; would my 2nd rate cupcakes ruin a little girl's big day? Eek!