I made the Magnolia's Vanilla Cupcakes.  Mine came out  brown on the edges and they also overlapped and looked like mushrooms .This ruined my cupcakes.  I think there must have been too much batter for 24 cupcakes.  I think if I used less batter in each cupcake they may have came out better, but I would have more than 24 cupcakes. The other problem is the flour.  I was confused with the self rising flour and AP flour.  I used Swans Down cake flour and Gold Metal AP flour.  I added baking powder to the recipe.  It said to add it to the AP flour.  So what brand is Self Rising Flour and what brand AP flour?

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I also had to pry them out of the pan, trim the edges than freeze for 10 minutes so I could ice them without getting crumbs all over the icing.

The other thing is the buttercream frosting.  It says to use 6-8 cups of Confectioners sugar.  I used 6 cups.  My icing tasted good but it got soft very quickly.  I had to ice the tops and sides and than refrigerate them so the icing could harden so I could pipe a design on top.  I also refrigerated the icing in the piping bag.     Why does the recipe say 6-8 cups on confectioners sugar when 6 is clearly not enough

Any advice would be great!

This is very frustrating and I spent hours making these cupcakes.  I am still waiting to complete them.

Company tonight I hope they appreciate my effort!

Add more flour to your cupcakes and they won't look like mushrooms.  3/4ths of a cup extra should do it.  A little trick I learned over the years.  Also it sounds like you're filling your cups too full.  And the reason why they can't tell you how many cups of powdered sugar to use (exactly) is because different manufacturers of powdered sugar add differing amounts of  corn starch to their bags to prevent clumping and depending on where you live, you may need one cup less in the winter and two cups more in the humidity of the summer.   Baking is a trial and error thing but once you nail a recipe, write it down and keep it in a folder for next time. 

I'm not sure adding more flour is the answer.  There is 1 1/2 cups of self-rising flour and 1 1/4 cups of all purpose flour.  I had 30 cupcakes.  Its crazy.......still the mushroom top.. Back to the drawing board. 

Thank you Mimifix.   Sometimes you can lead a horse to water but................well you know the rest.  :-)

Thanks for your help.  I will try this next time.  Oh, and I drink the water.....

@Lindalsc, All purpose flour is not self-rising. If flour is self-rising, it will say that on the bag. It might say "self-rising all-purpose flour." That is flour that has salt and baking powder already in it.

Thank you so much for the information about flour.  I will check the bag of flour when I purchase it and make sure its self rising.

Yea!  I really needed that answer because I am not giving up on these cupcakes!