Baking Cupcakes

So I finally got round to baking cupcakes, and they turned out delicious! I decided to follow a recipe from the book Baking Made Easy by Lorraine Pascale. I thought the recipe was good, but only if you are making very large cupcakes or more than than 12! Even though the recipe states that it makes 12, the cases were overfilled and there was so much buttercream!! Got enough for 12 more cakes leftover, and cut the peaks off the cakes which were eaten very quickly.

I tried out my Tala icing bag too, and it was really good! The buttercream was sooo stiff though, I'll try a different recipe next time, so the icing didn't come out so good because of this as my hand was hurting :/ But they tasted good and that's the main thing! I used coloured shimmer sugar in pink and blue to match the cases and make them look pretty.

I wonder how long they'll last...! Any recommendations of good recipes for buttercream?