Cupcakes!

I will be making cupcakes for an 8 year old's birthday party on June 5th and decided to test drive a recipe and some decorating ideas yesterday. The heat and humidity weren't frosting friendly and neither was my shortage of time. I found myself at 5:00 still working on cupcakes with a load of clothes tumbling in the dryer that were going to need hanging or folding, dinner still to be made and I was in desperate need of a shower before leaving the house for my knitting group at 6:30. 

Most of my ideas and the altered directions to boxed cake mix came from Hello, Cupcake or What's New, Cupcake. (Books and website here)

This idea was really cute but didn't travel well, at least not on a plate. The cupcakes have pink icing piped in a swirl pattern to resemble the ends of a skein of yarn. Placing them on their sides and attempting to move the plate caused the top heavy cupcakes to fall over onto their crowns. This photo was hastily staged before I left the house. The cupcakes were transported upright on the plate without the yarn "label" and reassembled at the knit shop. When the cupcake liners were tucked completely inside the label, the overall effect was much nicer.

I should have taken my camera to the store to get a better picture and also to get Nancy's happy reaction.

Next are sunflower cupcakes with Oreo centers. I tinted icing yellow using gel color, then stuck a toothpick into orange gel coloring and stuck the toothpick into the bowl of yellow in 5-6 places. I didn't mix the orange in, just transferred it all to a decorating bag and let squeezing the bag to create the color striations in the petals.

Blueberry or cherry tart, anyone? By now the frosting was really getting warm. Between the heat of the kitchen and my hands, I'm surprised I didn't have icing soup. This many M&Ms on top of a cupcake is probably a bit much for an adult, but a child would like them, and a few on a dessert table to set the mood and supply decoration would be cute. The icing was tinted pale yellow and cocoa powder was added to make the pie dough color.

Flat lattice strips would have looked better on the tart tops, but time was against me. My fellow knitting buddies didn't mind. Once the cupcake is in your mouth, you tend to forget the design flaws.

With five cupcakes to go and no time left, I piped a rosette of white icing (the color is off in this photo, the frosting really is pure white) onto Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Miniatures, sprinkled some decorations on top and stuck them on frosted cupcakes.

I think a plate of these candies made to look like little cupcakes would be cute all by themselves.

I have a dozen cupcakes still undecorated. Whether they get another experimental treatment or just get a glop of frosting depends on the temperature, my patience and Colton's cooperation today. If you don't need frosting but would like a chocolate cupcake fix, c'mon over. The coffee is always on.