Funfetti Cupcakes with Vanilla Frosting, 01/27

Happy Birthday Kelli!! Two days early. :) This design was inspired by my new cupcake book, Hello, Cupcake! It was the perfect amount of cupcake hoopla for Kel's birthday, because, as we all know, she is the queen of hoopla (and other things as well!). The cupcakes were just a Pillsbury Funfetti Mix topped with Pillsbury Vanilla Frosting. Then the decorating began. The little candies are Runts, because they all came in the right colors. You could also use M'n'Ms and it would have the same cute effect. The candles are chocolate Piroutte cookies, frosted with vanilla frosting and wrapped with a Sour Patch straw (microwaved, cut in half and rolled out flat). The "flame"is a banana Runt, outlined with orange tinted frosting. These cupcakes took a bit of prep time, and I had to put them together at school (which led to a few nightmare-ish dreams that the set up wouldn't work), so it was kind of like do-or-die at lunch when I was putting them together. Luckily there weren't any huge problems, other than they were kind of tilt-y, but hey, it still stood up until people started digging in--which didn't take too long :)

Lemon Cheesecake Cupcakes with Lemon Curd AND Lemon Yogurt Cupcakes with Vanilla Cream Frosting, 01/13

Cupcake Wednesdays is celebrating a birthday a week early. Fellow cupcake-er Art's birthday is next Wednesday, and since finals fall on that day (and thus a minimum day), we get out of school early. No one--trust me, NO ONE--wants to stay late, even for cupcakes. So in honor of Art's birthday (and NOT the Lame, I mean, Lane Kiffin hiring--Art's theory), we had two types of lemon cupcakes, lemon being his favorite flavor. Well, similar to the last cheesecake cupcake I made (no thanks to Marnie, but more on her later), there were none left, save for the one I especially reserved for my mom. Without that reservation, they would all be gone. To top off these cupcakes, I made lemon curd (honestly, I didn't know you could make lemon curd at home, but I guess I didn't have an explanation of how to make it otherwise...). It turned out well. And much cheaper than store-bought, so VICTORY. Now, because of picky Marnie (really, how much do you weigh? Tuck your man-purse), I made another cupcake, still lemon, but more of a true cupcake--Lemon Yogurt. Both were from 125 Best Cupcakes book, although I adapted this one by adding lemon flavored yogurt instead of the plain yogurt it called for. I did NOT like how these cupcakes did not rise very much. I might want to add a touch of baking soda next time. I just piled on a load of Vanilla Cream frosting and all was well. :)

Raspberry Cupcakes with Raspberry Vanilla Buttercream Frosting, 01/06

Well it happened--I created my own cupcake recipe. I sat down and--no joke--analyzed a bunch of different cupcake recipes to determine wet to dry ratio, sugar to butter ratio, sugar and butter to egg ratio, and then all that to flour. This is how I spent my winter break. But don't get me wrong, it was fun :) Anyway, this cupcake has raspberry puree and raspberry extract to make sure it tasted enough like raspberries, and to my pleasant surprise, they turned out! Light and fluffy and not poisonous! The frosting was an improvisation on the Easy Buttercream recipe from 125 Best Cupcakes book, and the decorations were inspired by my NEW Hello, Cupcake cookbook (a Christmas present) in that I used their technique to make the leaf without a specific decorating tip. And if you look at the close up, the leaf does look pretty realistic--for frosting at least. And well, I am pretty proud of myself for creating my own recipe, so proud that I did a little dance. My co-workers laughed, but that's ok because their mouths were full of cupcake.