Rainbows pt. 2

Well after discovering those adorable rainbow cupcakes, I thought I'd give it a try with pastels for Easter. I certainly learned my lesson with portioning the batter to color it; in this case, less is NOT more. If and when I make these again I'm going to double the batch to make certain that I have enough of every colour to make enough cupcakes...I had a couple fall short of a few layers. Also, instead of using a spoon to drop in each color I'm going to use a piping bag next time. I'm sure it'll go a lot quicker, more cleanly and allow for better control of how much hits the pan.

The colours darkened as they baked which was a little disappointing (and surprising...) so they weren't as pastel as they were in the bowl, but I still think they were cute!

Rainbows!

Just how FANTASTIC are these? I stumbled upon these Rainbow Cupcakes today and I want so badly to make them because they look like so much fun! The youngest in my family is 19 (with the exception of my newborn cousin, Brett) and I think they'd be perfect to make with/for kids, but oh well. I guess I'll just have to make them for my own amusement :D


They'd probably look great in pastel blues and pinks for Easter...I think I just figured out what I'll be bringing for Easter dinner!

My First Order!

I just dropped off my first order!
It was for 3 dozen, so I made 6 different kinds:

Vanilla Brownie Surprise! with Buttercream


Lemon with Blackberry Cream Cheese


Cinnamon with Nutella Buttercream


Chocolate Cherry-Filled Cinnamon Cream Cheese


Coconut with Raspberry Buttercream


Carrot with Cream Cheese


The best part was that I made about a dozen extras (for my boyfriend and I to nibble on, of course), and after covering them with cling wrap leaving them on the dining room table, we went to bed. Around 3am, I heard one of the cats playing with what I thought was a ball of paper, no biggie. Well he kept coming closer, and eventually jumped on the bed and dropped what he had on my leg. I thought to myself, "jeeze that's a lot heavier than a piece of pap...no...it can't be!" So I reached down and got a handful of icing and cupcake! The little bugger daintily unwrapped the tray (how I have NO idea), stole a cupcake from the corner and I swear to god started to pull off the liner to eat it. He even brought it to bed!!!
I take it as a compliment; my cupcakes are loved by even cats! ♥

Surprise!

My most recent experiment was originally going to be a vanilla cupcake with a chocolate chip cookie base, which, to my demise, wasn't possible since I had run out of brown sugar (and the store had already closed!) "Oh well," I thought, "what else can I stuff into a cupcake?"

Brownies.

What a wonderful little surprise concealed by a tasty layer of vanilla cake, hidden underneath a billow of icing (pink icing at that!)

These were fun, and surprisingly easy to make!

First I made the cake batter and brownie batter.
I then filled each cup half full with cake batter.












After baking them at 325°F for about 5 minutes I put a dollop of brownie batter in the centre of each cup. Pre-baking allows the outside of the cake to firm up just enough to keep the brownie batter from sinking to the bottom. Back in the oven they went!








Fast forward about 15 minutes.
The brownie puffed up a bit more than I was expecting, so now I know for next time to use less baking powder, or save a little cake batter and top off the centres after the brownie dollop.










Topped with a pretty little swirl of pink buttercream, the finished product looks like just a plain vanilla cupcake, right? But then...











...Surprise!
What could be better than finding a second delicious treat inside an already delicious one?!