Pink Cupcakes

After an afternoon of mowing the yard (front and back!), Puff and I decided to cap off our evening by doing something we've (ok .. I've) been meaning to do for a long time ... make cupcakes! My sister is coming to visit over the Civic Holiday weekend and I wanted to throw her a mini-baby shower - she's due in October. Instead of buying or making a cake, I decided to try my hand at making cupcakes. I dunno .. maybe by making cupcakes, if it goes wrong, it won't feel like one huge disaster .. just a bunch of small oopsies. :)

We made both the cupcake and the frosting from scratch. The cake was a vanilla cupcake. I love the smell of vanilla cake baking in the oven. The sweet smell just fills the kitchen. For the icing, we prepared a raspberry buttercream. The pink colour you see, is not food colouring. I have to admit, buttercream is easy to work with but difficult to maintain .. after all, it is butter and in the summer, it will melt or change (darkens) the colour of the buttercream. Puff and I are weird folks .. we don't stock candy at home. But I manage to dig up a box of Easter Smarties and topped each cupcake with a smarty. <rant>Okay, I know you're thinking "Ewwww!! Smarties from Easter? That was *how many* months ago??" We just don't go through candy that quickly. Besides, we all know chocolate doesn't rot that fast. :) And I promise when we do make the cupcakes for the shower, they won't have Easter smarties on them.

</rant>

This was the end result of our creation. I think vanilla worked best because they make the pink frosting stand out.

At the last minute, I remember we bought shredded coconut for the top .. they looked snow capped. Not bad for a first-time cupcake maker, eh?