My sister-in-law Kristen asked for recipes for all those cuppies I made yesterday. Since I stayed up late with sugar-induced insomnia and I'm tired and trying to avoid walking the dog (I'll get around to it . . .), I thought I would grant her request. It's a little embarrassing, however, to admit that there are not really any recipes, per se. I had to laugh out loud last night when a newer lady I don't know very well asked me if I was a caterer. HA! Betty Crocker is a busy baker's best friend. We go waaaaay back, she and I. So, while these are nothing fancy, I
will share how I customized each one to my liking.
Red Velvet Cuppies with Whipped Cream Frosting and Raspberries.
The secret here is in my "home-made" whipped cream frosting. It's so light and kind of marshmallowy. I just whipped together a can of whipped white frosting (the kind that says "whipped" or "fluffy" on the can) with half a container of Cool Whip. Pipe it on top of the cake with a large star tip and plunk a raspberry right down on top. Yummy. People will think you spent hours on them!
Butterfly Cuppies.
Use any flavor of cake your litlle heart desires. You're going to need Wilton candy melts for these in two colors. I used the dark cocoa and then orange and blue for the insides. I found a cute little butterfly image online printed it out for my pattern. Cover your pattern sheet with wax paper. Melt about half a bag of cocoa candy melts and half a bag of the colored ones in separate bowls. The trick is to get the right consistency -- not too runny, not too stiff. It takes some experimenting. I went through about a dozen wonky looking wings (which my kids cheerfully disposed of) before I got the hang of it. Carefully spoon melted chocolate into zip-loc freezer bags and cut a small opening in one corner. Pipe the dark chocolate around the edges of your design first. Keep the two wings separate -- don't pipe around the whole pattern continuously. You want to have two individual wings for each cupcake. Fill in your outline with the colored candy. Only do 6 or 8 at a time so you can go back with a toothpick and swirl the colors together before the chocolate hardens. Also, sprinkle a few white non-pariels on the wet chocolate. Allow chocolate to set. Frost your cupcakes however you like and then place two chocolate chips on top of each. These are going to support your wings. (If I were to do this again and use white frosting on the cupcake, I would also use white chocolate chips so as to make them less noticeable.) Rest each wing on a chocolate chip, digging the center into the frosting a little bit to hold it. Then pipe a line of frosting down the center to create a body. These were a huge hit with the girls last night!!
Sunflower Cuppies.
The trick to this one is to stiffen up your store-bought frosting a bit. As-is, it'll be too soft to pipe a design so you need to add about a cup of powdered sugar to one can of frosting. I know. It makes my teeth hurt just to think about it. Also add yellow food coloring. Pipe a small dab of frosting in the center of each cupcake a place half of a mini-oreo (preferably the half that the filling doesn't stick to when you split it apart) on top. Using a leaf tip, pipe a layer of petals around the oreo then go back and do a second layer on top of that, filling in any gaps between petals.
Pistachio Cuppies with Pistachio Cream Frosting.
Oh, how I wish I could tell you about some gourmet recipe I followed to make these. There IS a delicious sounding, fancy recipe
here. But I was in a real hurry and I needed something green so I just made something up on the fly. I bought a box of Pistachio instant pudding and mixed half of it in with the golden cake batter. Just add that, nothing else extra, and bake as directed. For the frosting, mix the other half of the pudding with half a container of cool whip. (I also added a little green food coloring to brighten it up.) That's it. So easy and so delicious. The pudding in the cake makes it really moist.
Peanut Butter and Honey Cuppies.
Since the church added Virtue as a value and made the associated color gold, I struggled with this one. How do you make a GOLD cupcake?! Edible gold glitter costs a fortune and kind of freaks me out -- eating real gold? Weird. So I made peanut butter frosting (my kids' favorite) and drizzled honey over the top of it. Who doesn't love a peanut butter and honey sandwich?! And the honey was pretty, and shiny and gold-ish, though it doesn't show in the picture.. I used to make peanut butter frosting from scratch and I'll share that recipe later if you are really gluttons for punishment. Now I just add about a cup of peanut butter to a can of cream cheese frosting. Tastes every bit as decadent as the home-made version.
The others were less inventive. I frosted spice cake cuppies in cream cheese frosting and rolled them in shaved coconut -- pretty, but plain by comparison -- and piped simple purple flowers and greeen leaves onto red velvet cuppies with chocolate frosting -- a cool color combo which the teen girls really appreciated. These were so fun to make and they only require very basic cake decorating equipment (and skill). I didn't even use real bags for piping my frosting. Just cut off the corner of a gallon size freezer bag and stick the coupler down in there. So easy. I'd love to know what you think if you try any of these!