Cup-pies

I know, I know. You're thinking, "Kyla, these are NOT cupcakes, they're PIES!" But, I MADE them in a cupcake pan, so they're tiny like cupcakes, which means I am posting them here. I was super excited to try these out. I've never made a pie in my entire life, so it was a fun thing to attempt. I think they turned out awesome. I made cherry, strawberry, blueberry, and peach. I wanted to also make apple, but I ran out of pie crust. Oh well. I will have to make some more this weekend!

Lady bug Spring cupcakes

I randomly made these the other day after wanting to try out a new cream cheese icing recipe I found. At first I was just going to make some basic red velvet with cream cheese icing, but then I got the idea to make a spring-themed cupcake. Cream cheese icing doesn't work as well as butter cream to make decorations, so instead of making grass with my decorating tip, I chose to use Wilton's green color spray to make the icing look like grass. The lady bug is a cinnamon chewy candy I drew on with Wilton edible decorating pens and some black icing for the head. The flower candies are spring sprinkles I have been dying to use for awhile.

Pink lemonade treats

 

As I have probably mentioned before, I've been learning how to make cake batter and icing from scratch. My icings are delicious (if I do say so myself) but I am still experimenting to find the perfect cake batter recipes. I have had a vacation planned to go to South Carolina for the last few months and I wanted to make cupcakes with my cousins (who are 11 and 13). Since I wasn't familiar with their kitchen (or what they had or didn't have that I would need) and knew that I couldn't take every single thing from my kitchen on a car ride for seven hours, I decided to settle on a box mix just this once so that my cousins and I could focus on having fun and not worrying about missing ingredients.

While grocery shopping for a box mix, I came across a pink lemonade flavor. I texted with my cousins and made sure they liked the idea of a pink lemonade cupcake, then bought the box mix. Then, since I worried my cream cheese and butter cream icing recipes wouldn't go with a pink lemonade cupcake, I bought the pink lemonade icing too. That evening, I searched my kitchen for some things to make these cupcakes perfect. I got straws, cake liners, icing bags, tips, etc. and packed them in my suitcase. I intended to buy lemons when I got into my aunt's town, but I guess the excitement of finally arriving in my destination made me forget to buy them.

The icing on the cake (pun intended) is that when I arrived to my aunt's house, they happened to have a bunch of leftover lemons from another family member's recent stay there, so I was excited. Leah, Carsyn, and I put on our aprons (which I made the three of us a few months ago) and we got to work.

I got to teach the girls how much batter to put into the cupcake liners and how to even them out. Then I showed them how to fill and hold the icing bags and pipe icing onto the cupcakes. We cut the straws and lemons and decorated the cupcakes and had a great time. Needless to say, they were a hit. The two dozen cupcakes we made were gone within 48 hours!

I've already found a pink lemonade mix to make from scratch online and I am going to find an icing recipe too. I have so many great summer ideas planned for this cupcake flavor!

I decided to attach two extra photos with this entry. One is of Carsyn, myself, and Leah (and yes, I am aware that even though I am more than a decade older than both of them, they look my age) and the other is of Carsyn pretending to drink the cupcake like it is a real pink lemonade.