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And Now For Some Cupcakes!

Well, I made my first cupcakes from my new book: Hello, Cupcake! We really loved them and thought they turned out great!

I took a risk and let The Princess choose whatever she wanted out of the book for her birthday. I thought she took it pretty easy on me when she chose this one:

And she really did, these are probably the least complicated in the entire book~thank goodness. Although putting it together was the challenge! Vince and I nearly came to blows in the kitchen trying to get it just right-ha!!

First I gathered my *stuff*: cupcake papers, cake mix, candy decorations, cookies, frosting ingredients. Then we got started.
I went with the *Funfetti* cake mix, which is just white cake with sprinkles mixed in. As you can see in the photo from the book they used different brightly-colored cupcake papers for each tier with white cake. I couldn't find solid bright cupcake papers anywhere so I decided to use white paper cups and food coloring gels to dye the cake mix. It was a pretty good solution!
After the cupcakes were cooled and frosted (with my fave buttercream frosting!), we began the decorating and stacking process.

Note: use a wider platter than the one in the above picture! We ended up having to take this apart and start over on a very large silver platter.
I never knew that candy could be so expensive!! I bought this at one of those mall candy shops where they sell it by the pound. Quite pricey, but I justified it since I was saving so much money with a *homemade* cake:) wink, wink
Then we put on the cookie candles. I couldn't find these types of cookies with pink stripes like in the book, so we bought these golden Oreo fun stix (which are sinfully delicious, I might add) and my sweet sis, Kari, striped them for me with red food coloring. She did an awesome job!

To make these look like candles you put a *banana* Runt candy in the top and pipe orange frosting around it. Really cute!!
So there you have it! Not perfect by a long shot (especially since I had to trim off some overly browned edges and that made the frosting process more difficult), but a very cute and memorable birthday cake! It tasted absolutely delicious, by the way:)

Comments

Kayren said…
Super cute, Lora, and a family event, too! I'll have to give your *fave buttercream frosting* recipe a try soon since it doesn't have any shortening in it...I don't like using shortening unless I absolutely have to and I love butter. And that's probably something of an oxymoron.
Jamie said…
So very cute! You did a great job. Hope her birthday was a very happy day!
Kayren~I know what you mean, the thought of all that shortening in frosting sort of grosses me out:) This version is really yummy!
Anonymous said…
I love this, tomorrow is my daughter and husbands birthday, I'm going to make a cupcake tower for them! Thanks for the great idea!
Fulton Quads said…
That is such a CREATIVE cake! I may just "steal" the idea for our quads 1/2 birthday this July. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it! I love the cake mix being different colors & the striping of the "candles" too! Looks VERY yummy! Please let us know how much everyone loved it!
Love, Cathy & the quads
itsaquadlife.blogspot.com
What a beautiful cake and how nice that you all did it together.

Roberta Anne
Oh wow, Lora, the cup ckaes cake came out so cute! Happy birthday to your sweet Princess!
This is an adorable idea. Our little girls have close birthdays.Avery turned 9. You make the yummiest looking food.
Thanks so much for all of your sweet comments on the cupcake cake! Everyone loved it!

Gabrielle~if you make one, tell me! I'd love to hear how it turned out.
j said…
It turned out so pretty! I saw a cupcake book in Sam's the other day and stood there for twenty minutes looking at it. Glad your princess had a Happy Birthday.
Kate said…
I am so impressed Lora! That looks awesome.

Can you believe I never make cupcakes? I don't know why. I think I should start though, and I'm definitely going to see if I can find that cookbook at our library.

Happy belated birthday to your princess. By the way, glad you made it home safely from your trip. I hope you get to relax some this weekend.

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