Back to Baking

Well as everyone who personally knows me knows I love to cook. Finding new recipes or coming up with my own is always fun. Not everything I come up with turns out but I have three (not so) willing taste testers at home and because I am Mom they have to eat! One day I’m sure that they will catch on that if they don’t eat I’m actually not going to let them starve, but while they still have that fear I am going to use it.

What a lot of people don’t know is I also have a passion for baking cupcakes. Not so much anything else but I love cupcakes. Before it was all about just decorating them so I used to always stick with simple boxed cakes. Now I much rather make them from scratch. Don’t get me wrong boxed mixes are ok but once you have that cake made from scratch you will definitely taste the difference. Finding the time to bake is often difficult so it generally just got forgotten but I have lately realized that I miss it terribly so I am actively dedicating time to it. It also might help that I may like someone who happens to enjoy baked goods and you know what they say “A way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”! Plus my kids love that they get to help decorate again.

With that being said I made my first batch of cupcakes this past weekend. I saw this idea last summer but never had the time until now so I give you

I may have cheated with these and used a boxed cake mix but I also added a couple extra ingredients (sshhh they have sour cream in them!) I know sounds horrid but it helps keep the cake moist.

 After making the cake mix I separated it into 6, what I thought were equal, bowls and then used food coloring to make my colors. Make sure to use gel food coloring to get the vibrant colors.

Then it was time for the homemade frosting. My thoughts were since I used a French vanilla cake mix that strawberry frosting sounded the best well I have a younger sister who is allergic to strawberries so I decided to be creative. I made a simple butter cream frosting recipe and then added Strawberry Nesquik Powder! The frosting came out tasting just like strawberry milk and she was able to eat them with no risk of a reaction.

The true gem of these cupcakes is when you bite or cut into them! These definitely took longer to prepare but if you have the help of another adult it should go faster. I don’t have the recipes with me now but I will get them up in another blog post hopefully tonight.