Page 129 - Cupcakes

and chocolate) and one frosting (chocolate) that my mother made. Now, she was

a stupendous cook, and it was a delicious and creamy cocoa frosting, the stuff
that lured your fingers to the bowl, but it was always the same. And we never
thought to ask for anything different. Then, as an adult, I learned of a butterfly
cupcake recipe that some lucky children baked. It seems that while I was poking
my fingers in chocolate buttercream, other children were fashioning butterfly
wings out of cupcake tops, positioning them on cupcake bottoms, and then
decorating their works of art before eating them up. Now that I’m a mom, I
thought I’d try it out on my children.
One January morning, in the midst of testing cupcake recipes for this book, I

baked big almond-flavored cupcakes. I scooped more than enough batter into the
cups so that the tops would rise up over the pan and I would be able to slice them
off and use them for butterfly wings. Then Amy Baron, a student who was
helping me at the time, made buttercream frostings and we tinted them various
beautiful shades, like buttercup yellow, cornflower blue, and rose pink. We dyed
granulated sugar to match each frosting, fashioned antennae out of licorice, and
found other add-ons, like gold dragées, to dress up these little cakes. When my
children arrived home from school, the kitchen looked like an art studio. They
couldn’t wait to create their own butterflies, and my older daughter turned hers
into a dragonfly instead. It might have been bleak outside on that January
afternoon, but it was bright and glorious inside, with all the warm smells and
dazzling colors.

I hope you can tell how much I’ve loved creating this chapter! There is plenty
of whimsy here, including those Butterfly Cupcakes with Pastel Frostings and
Lemonade Angel Cakes with Creamy Lemonade Frosting, and Fortune Cookie
Cupcakes with a real fortune inside. But don’t feel as if you’ve got to have an art
degree (I surely don’t) to create special cupcakes for your children. Many kids
are drawn to tried-and-true favorite flavors, and for them I’ve developed Cookie
Dough Cupcakes, Cinnamon Toast Cupcakes, and Banana Pudding Cupcakes.

And this chapter is also filled with cupcakes that adults will love as well. The
Pineapple Banana Smoothie Cupcakes with Pineapple Buttercream are easy to
make in a blender, just like a smoothie. The Malted Milk Cupcakes are sheer
nostalgia and will take you back to childhood. The Milk Chocolate Rocky Road
Cupcakes, S’mores Cupcakes, and Little Fudge Brownie Bites should come with
warning labels because they’re so addictive.

I’ve tossed in two recipes no cupcake book should be without—The Best
Birthday Cupcakes with Two Frostings and White on White Cupcakes. The first
is a recipe we have used successfully for countless birthday parties, and it works