Back to cupcakes!

It has been quite sometime, and honestly, I kind of feel like I have been abandoning you. However cupcakes, I am ready for you once again. I have been on this cake binge for so long, I really did miss doing cupcakes. My boyfriend Josh's mom asked for a cake a few weeks ago, and since he didn't make it back for mother's day, those cake plans fell through. Luckily we are heading back to the cities tomorrow, so his mother Alona will finally have her cake... err.. cupcakes!

I saw these Hydrangea cupcakes (I love her blog, she makes so many beautiful things!) and I wanted to try them out so badly! Alona is passionate about flowers and loves to garden, so I figured it would be a perfect time to try these cupcakes.

Yesterday brought typical Minnesota Summer weather - extremely hot and humid - so I opted for the box mix again since the frosting/piping is really the star of these cakes. Because it was so humid, I didn't even want to attempt to make the frosting at the same time, I knew it would be a sloppy mess in the humidity and wouldn't hold shape.

Mixing up the chocolate batter

I couldn't leave the cakes too plain!

My mom put some Reese's mini cups in my Easter basket, so I decided to use them in my cakes. I froze them and before I put them in the cupcakes then lightly coated them in flour. (This keeps the candy from sinking to the bottom of the cake)

All done!

I filled 12 with the peanut butter cups and filled the other 12 with some butter cream frosting.

Mixed up the two colors

Then I carefully added them side by side in my piping bag; I used a Wilton 2D tip for these.

These two were just for practice and I needed to see both colors come out of the bag before I started on hers.

It was not as warm or humid today, but I still had to take 3 breaks in-between piping these cupcakes. The frosting would start to lose its shape so I would throw my piping back in the fridge for about 15 minutes to firm it back up. This really made me dread decorating pastries when it really starts to heat up!

The butter cream frosting is in there somewhere! :)

I think these turned out beautiful. I tried to use the same color as the other ones I've seen, but it would be fun to experiment with some different colors as well. These were pretty easy to decorate, even though mine don't look quite as good as the ones I was going off of. I hope Alona enjoys them and they somewhat look like springtime flowers! I think I am going to part with cakes for just a bit and switch back to cupcakes. My mom and I are going to do some baking together over the weekend, so stay tuned!