Experiments in frosting

I tried a few new things with cupkates last week. One of them was a new kind of wrapper:




I think they turned out very cute. However, I am not sure I will be using them again. First off, they are very difficult to proportion correctly. If you fill it up the typical 2/3, they overflow, and when you do it only 1/2 full, they don't come all the way to the top. Not to mention you can add the exact same amount of batter to two cups and they will rise to different levels. For someone who values uniformity in her cupkates, this was a big negative.

Then there is the eating factor. As in, no one knows how. You can't really pull them off, so do you just squeeze it in your mouth? Try to take a bite without pulling the paper down? I too have been left guessing as to the proper technique.

So like a lot of pretty things, these just aren't practical.


I also tried a different icing technique:



I like how the flowers turned out, especially considering I didn't have the right tip for them. I hope once I get the right tip I can perfect this look. I think it would look really cute with a brightly colored frosting also.

And finally, here is a quick picture I grabbed of some cupkates I took for my small group girls:




Notice the one on the bottom and the right, these are chocolate cupkates with orange cream cheese frosting. I had more of that icing on hand than any others this week, and the combination sounded good, so I thought I would give it a try. I was very pleased with the result! I'm not even the biggest orange fan, but these just really seemed to lighten up the chocolate a bit. A chocolate cake with orange cream cheese filling, covered in ganache sound heavenly. I think I'll have to work on a cupkate version of that...