A few weeks ago, my friend asked me to bake a large order of cupcakes for her daughter's post-wedding reception. Oh my goodness was I excited!
We knew immediately that one cupcake would be the strawberry with strawberry buttercream and chocolate butterflies. From a list of about a dozen flavor choices, my friend also requested amaretto and snickerdoodle. What a fun trio! I spent the two weeks prior to the event baking up a storm. Literally. And loving every minute!
I took the amaretto cupcake and frosting recipe from The Primrose Bakery and filled them for fun with a white chocolate creme filling that I actually also used in Sashi's strawberry-flavored ballerina cake. (Yum-oH!) I highly recommend Ghirardelli white chocolate chips - even over Callebaut white chocolate (which I actually didn't like at all!) if you try this recipe. I also added coursely chopped, roasted almonds to the chocolate cream to accentuate the almond flavor and to add texture.
:)
The Snickerdoodle cupcake proved a little persnickety and required a couple of trials. My first attempt came from Martha's Cupcake cookbook - and this time the taste tester (my husband) gave me a big thumbs down.
In the end, I used this muffin recipe. I researched (yes I did!) whether a muffin could be used as a cupcake and officially decided that, because the line between the two is blurry, if you top it with frosting and call it cake, then it is cake. :) (Cupcake wisdom by Karin. Amen.)
The morning of the party, I finally settled on a frosting - my bloggy friend Daiana's vanilla bean buttercream - and through the help of my friends on Facebook, went with a rich cinnamon cream in the middle of these. Pookie helped me with the decorating - a Pirouette cookie and cinnamon sugar sprinkles.
It took a village, but it sure was fun!
Later that weekend, I made margarita cupcakes for Father's Day.
And then I retired from my professional baking career.
...unless someone else wants me to try a recipe?
;)
