Cake Walk Cupcakes

Quickly here are the cupcakes I made for one of my co-worker's daughter's school's Cake Walk Fundraiser. (that's a lot of apostrophes huh?)  The theme was "under the Big Top".  Big Top meaning circus in case you didn't know.  I really love that it has a theme but I struggled to stick to one idea.  So...I just made super bright fun cupcakes.  I think it fits the theme.  I still have to name them though....

I immediately started thinking stripes and elephants.  Dumbo also came to mind.  Then I thought of the foods you eat at the circus and almost decided on making

http://cakecentral.com/gallery/1186760

or

http://hoosierhomemade.com/cupcake-tuesdaysnow-cones-ice-cream-cones/

The Sno Cone ones are my favorite and I may have to make those at a later date but for now I made it simple.  Also, again how fun is a circus!!!

If you grew up in the 80's or remember then you might remember this show

http://www.retrojunk.com/details_articles/1565/

One of my FAVORITES as a kid. 

http://www.thewrap.com/blog-post/disneys-dumbo-broadway-bound-15115

Here they are...

 Frosting Fun!

 Settled in their box ready to go

Pink Sugar Sprinkles

Unwrapped

Ready for Taste Test

Hubby Rating

Cake:  10

Frosting:  8.5

Filling:  N/A

Overall:  8.5

Appearance:  9

For these I used Funfetti Mix and similar recipe to the previous chocolate cakes.  Regular buttercream frosting and teal and electric pink gel coloring!

Happy Baking

Kristi

Baking Fail

Well it didn't take to long to have a baking fail post...

I decided I would try to make vanilla cupcakes a la Magnolia Bakery with my own Nutella frosting.  Sounds good right? 

Well....

Baking Attempt #1

The recipe seemed easy enough, butter, eggs, flour, vanilla, sugar...

Tip:  Make sure you read all of the directions and measurements.

In my effort to have less dishes, I used the 1/2 cup measuring cup for my sugar instead of the 1 cup measuring cup.  I knew I'd have to use the cup twice for the 2 cups of sugar called for in the recipe, but I forgot that I was using the 1/2 measure (which means I would have needed to add 4 1/2 measure cups).  Needless to say I only added 1 cup of sugar to the batter....

When I took them out of the oven they had pools of butter on them...When we tasted them we decided they tasted oddly enough like cornbread minus the corn...Strange...

Hubby did find a good use for them by adding pulled BBQ pork to them. 

Baking Attempt #2

Sooooooo I made them again, this time adding the correct amount of sugar.  They looked a little better and weren't floating in butter. 

Still, they did not taste as fabulous as I imagined them to be.  But they passed the hubby taste test so I made some frosting for them. 

Again this did not turn out as fabulous as I imagined.  Basically I added Nutella (amazing) to a buttercream frosting recipe.  Not terrible but not fantastic either.  I imagined a more gooey frosting than what I turned out.  So chalk it up to a baking fail.

- Kristi