Baby Shower Cupcakes

These baby shower cupcakes were made by Anne-Marie N. from Firestone, CO. Thanks! You can find out more about Anne-Marie by visiting her blog at www.thismamacooks.com

I made my Baby Shower Cupcakes for my friend Michelle’s baby shower. After losing one child, going through a failed adoption, and finally getting pregnant again, I was thrilled that she was finally having a healthy baby girl.

Since she had one of those “mad hatter” crooked, wildly colored cakes at her wedding, I knew she wanted something different.

I asked her to go over to Wilton.com to get some ideas. We had a good laugh emailing each other about the elaborate, over-the-top, but rather tacky cakes on the site.

We were finally inspired by Wilton’s baby shower cupcakes as something cute, fun, and easy to do. (Michelle was very nice about letting me make cakes that wouldn’t stress me out, knowing that I have two small kids at home.)

Having found that my baking skills at a mile high plus aren't as successful as they were at sea level, I've gone to rely on mixes rather than making cakes from scratch.

So as requested by the father-to-be, I made devil's food chocolate cupcakes using Duncan Hines cake mix. But I do make my “butter cream” frosting from scratch. I use a recipe from a cake decorating class I took through a local recreation district.

It’s the basic Wilton recipe of powdered sugar, shortening, powdered egg whites, and flavoring, but with my teacher’s changes – use water instead of milk, and add almond flavoring to the vanilla and butter flavorings, and use more butter flavoring. (All the flavorings I use are made by Wilton. They work very well since they don’t change the color of the frosting.)

I followed the directions on the Duncan Hine’s box for baking at altitude and made 3 dozen cupcakes. I made a double batch of white frosting, and colored it with Wilton’s copper paste color (just use a little!) for the skin tone and Wilton’s brown for the face and hair. I use Wilton piping tips, spatulas, and piping bags as well. (When my local crafts store has the 50% off sale on Wilton product, you’ll find me there stocking up.)

I used the spatula to frost the cupcakes (a bit challenging since cupcakes never bake up flat) and either a #2 or #3 tip to pipe on the faces and hair. I had a lot of fun making a variety of faces and expressions on all the cupcakes.

Michelle and her husband, Sean loved them, as did the rest of the baby shower guests.

Do you need a new pan to make your baby shower cupcakes ?