Quick, before I get Sidetrack'd

Let’s visit Little’s fourth birthday one last time…

Since Boo’s birthday in April, Little had told me that she wanted a rainbow cake for her birthday. I had it all planned out in my mind – ways to ensure all the layers of the cake turned out (unlike Boo’s), what icing to make, how to decorate it, what to serve it on. Then, the Saturday morning prior to her birthday she and I were out running an errand and on the way home she told me that she changed her mind, she wanted cupcakes instead.

I kicked back into idea mode and began figuring out what kind of cupcakes we might make. I considered borrowing the Wilton Big Cupcake cake pan, but Little really wanted individual cupcakes. Next, I thought of those pull-apart cakes where you use a shaped pan to make a variety of different cupcakes that make one “cake” (yeah, that description isn’t great, this is what I’m talking about). Finally I settled on just plain ol’ cupcakes.

The next challenge was finding a strawberry cake recipe. I have a recipe from my grandmother that I really like, but it uses gelatin and boxed cake mix. Since we are trying to limit our processed food consumption I was trying to find a recipe that was truly a from-scratch recipe. Thanks to dear ole Google, I stumbled upon a recipe at A Dash of Sass and it was wonderful.

Since we weren’t doing a rainbow cake I decided to do several colors of icing so the cupcakes would look pretty in the cupcake stand. I settled on vibrant blue, pink, purple, and green. I was very pleased with the colors. (the icing is a double batch of Wilton’s buttercream icing made fairly stiff and divided into fourths for tinting)

I used a large tip to pipe the icing on in swirls. (Funny story – the couplers I had were too small for my decorating tip. I had to forcefully hold the tip on the bag with one hand while piping the swirls. As long as I held it in place tight enough everything was fine, but if the tip slipped icing went everywhere) Then I placed the cupcakes on the stand. Matt added some sprinkles to the blue iced cupcake on top – per the birthday girl’s request. The candles were put in place and lit.

All that remained was the blowing out of the candles and the eating of the cupcakes.

Based on the icing on faces and the rapid rate of cupcake depletion, I’m pretty sure they were a hit.