Inspiration for these came from the 2010 Donna Hay Magazine kid’s issue.  Yes, I’ve had these cupcakes in my head for over one year!  Finally the opportunity came to make them for myself.

I did not use Donna Hay’s cake and frosting recipes.  I will never use a Donna Hay recipe for cakes or frostings as in the past I have repeatedly had issues and failures with them.  The recipes I used for my cupcakes were ones that I love and know will turn out properly and delicious.  The chocolate cupcakes are vegan, and the vanilla buttercream, while not vegan, is my favorite vanilla frosting recipe.  The recipes are below, although feel free to use your own favorite flavor combination.

A quick note about the vegan chocolate cupcakes: these cupcakes are very soft and moist and delicious. They are my favorite cupcake to bake. But I repeat, they are very soft and do fall apart easily. They would not be suitable for a heavy layer of frosting or lots of decorations.

Decorating these is extremely simple.  Use Smarties or M&M’s to place around the outside edges of the cupcakes (I used Smarties, but M&M’s would be smaller and probably would look slightly better).  The “alien” inside is a Starburst Sucks lollipop, in apple flavor.  I had to trim the plastic lollipop stick to fit down into the cupcake.  Finally, top the “alien” off with a tiny shot glass-sized clear plastic cup.  Be sure to also use foil cupcake liners for the full UFO effect!

We placed two candles on our favorite UFO and our little guy blew them out!  Happy Birthday!

These UFO cupcakes would be a hit at any children’s party and being so easy to decorate, anyone at all could do it!  If you make them for yourself or someone else, please share a photo with me – I’d love to see them!

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I knew these cupcakes would specifically be for children, so I wanted to make something very cute and child-friendly.  Rainbow cupcakes would be perfect!  I don’t mean those cakes that are packed full of food coloring to create some psychedelic rainbow-like patterns, as I’m not a huge fan of those.  No, what I mean is….

A real rainbow cupcake!   This is a classic chocolate cake and vanilla buttercream combo.  I used my favorite chocolate cupcake recipe, which happens to be vegan, and is chocolaty, moist and fluffy.  The vanilla buttercream was, of course, tinted with a touch of food coloring (except for the clouds).  The rainbow part is a sour fruit rainbow strap.

The process to create this cute look is super easy, you don’t even need to have any knowledge of cake decorating.  In fact, you don’t even need to bake cupcakes from scratch – use a boxed mix if you prefer.  While you’re at it, you can even use a tub of pre-made frosting.  The only things you’ll need extra are blue food coloring, a small piping bag or Ziploc bag, and rainbow fruit staps.

The recipes for the chocolate cupcakes and vanilla buttercream can be found by clicking on the respective links, which will take you to previous posts from my blog – the recipes will make 12 cupcakes.  For instructions on putting together the rainbow cupcakes, keep reading!

Now really, the process of putting these cupcakes together is pretty self-explanatory.  After making the frosting, take out about 1/3 cup of it; this will form the clouds.  Set it aside.  For the rest of the frosting, drop in a few drops of blue food coloring and mix really well.  The color you end up with entirely depends on you – if you’re after pastel, only add a few drops; if you want a dark blue sky, add more drops.  Take the blue frosting and spread it on top of the cooled cupcakes.

Spoon the remaining white frosting into a pastry bag or Ziploc bag, snip off a small part of the tip or corner (or use a small-ish pastry tip), then pipe out a cloud-like wisp of frosting on either side of the cupcake.

Finally, take the rainbow straps and chop them in half if they are longer straps, bend into a rainbow shape, line up the ends of the rainbow with the clouds and firmly, but gently, push the ends down into the blue frosting.  Easy!

When I came back to school that day to collect my daughter and bring her home, the ladies told me that my cupcakes were the first to sell out!  Hooray!  I hope my little donation will help with the fundraiser.

If you’re after ideas for something to do on a rainy day or a super easy last-minute idea for a child’s birthday party, I totally recommend trying out these rainbow cupcakes.  They are sure to be a huge hit with the kids!

I have breastfed my babies exclusively for the first six months of their lives (and weaned at 18 months), and on their six-month birthdays I have given them their first tastes of solid foods. Yesterday, the 24th, was Miles’ six-month birthday and we had a great day.

Miles had mashed bananas as his first food.

Well, he at least tried it. Not much of it got in. But generally the entire experience was a blast for him.

We spent the morning making cupcakes for the occasion as well, of course. We went pretty simple with chocolate and vanilla, but we made them a little bit more fancy by adding dark chocolate pieces to the chocolate cake batter, and adding vanilla bean paste to the buttercream. The tiny blue sugar hearts were the finishing touch. You can find these at Little Betsy Baker.

These were so cute, and tasted great too. I used Green & Black’s organic cocoa powder to make these cupcakes, which is the first time I’ve used anything organic in my cupcakes. Honestly, I’m skeptical about higher quality cocoa making baked goods taste better. I couldn’t taste anything exceptional in these cupcakes when compared to a standard cocoa powder, such as Hershey’s.

The method of preparing this cupcake batter is similar to that of making a muffin, and for me, the resulting cupcake is more muffin-like rather than cupcake-like, if you know what I mean.

What do you think about high-quality versus average-quality cocoa powders? Does it make a difference in the taste?

Dark Chocolate Cupcakes
Adapted from Woolworth’s Fresh magazine
Makes 12 cupcakes

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
2/3 cup caster sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
125g unsalted butter
100g dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
2 eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup milk, room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
100g dark chocolate, chopped

Method
Preheat oven to 200C (400F) .  Line a 12-cup muffin tin with cupcake liners.

Melt butter and 100g coarsely chopped dark chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water.  Stir until melted and smooth.  Cool.

Sift flour, cocoa powder, sugar and salt into a large bowl.

In a small bowl, whisk together melted butter and chocolate mixture, eggs, milk and vanilla extract until thoroughly combined.  Pour into flour mixture along with 100g chopped dark chocolate.  Stir gently, just until combined.

Divide batter evenly into cupcake liners and bake 15-20 minutes or until the tops spring back when touched.

Vanilla Bean Buttercream
Adapted from Martha Stewart
Makes enough to generously frost 12-16 cupcakes

Ingredients
170g unsalted butter, room temperature
225g confectioners’ sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste

Method
Beat butter with a mixer on medium-high speed until pale and creamy, about 2 minutes.

Reduce speed to medium. Add sugar, 1/4 cup at a time, beating after each addition, about 5 minutes. (After every 2 additions, increase speed to high, and beat for 10 seconds, then reduce speed to medium-high). Add vanilla, and beat until buttercream is smooth. Use immediately, or cover and refrigerate for up to 3 days (bring to room temperature, and beat on low speed until smooth before using).

Happy half-birthday to my little boy, I look forward to many more!

One night as I was putting her to bed she told me she wanted to make her own cupcake.  I asked her what kind of cupcake did she want to make.  She said she wanted a vanilla cake, pink raspberry frosting, a cherry on top and a piece of white chocolate.  I promised her I’d help her make them.

And later, we made her cupcake together.  They ended up being incredibly cute, don’t you think?  The recipe is made up of Billy’s vanilla cupcakes, a basic vanilla buttercream that has been tinted pink with red gel and flavored with LorAnn raspberry flavoring from Bake It Pretty, and topped with a maraschino cherry and a shard of Ghirardelli vanilla bean white chocolate.  The cupcake liner is also from Bake It Pretty.

In case you’re wondering why I didn’t use real raspberries to flavor the frosting it is because I have realized that raspberries actually turn frosting purple, and my daughter wanted pink frosting, so I had to artificially flavor and color it.

It was a fun experience for my daughter to see her cupcake brought to life, and for me it was a great moment to realize how creative she is!

July 5th was our big day, however.  I made cupcakes to celebrate my son’s second birthday and also Independence Day (although a day late).

Just plain old vanilla-on-vanilla.  He had quite a time blowing out the two little candles and was actually upset when they were both blown out!  He had such a big day that he stayed home with daddy and slept while my daughter and I went to our friend’s baby’s first birthday party.  We had a great time there as well and had lots of yummy food and cupcakes and ice cream for dessert!

I hope everyone else had a safe and fun (and non-rainy!) holiday weekend!  :)

Mine are nowhere near as cute as Martha’s – they are very easy to make, but the hardest part for me was piping those tiny beaks.  I don’t have a small leaf tip, so I made one from a Ziploc bag, reinforced with tape.  Maybe that was my problem!

I did not use the vanilla cupcake recipe or the chocolate buttercream from Martha’s instructions.  I used Billy’s vanilla cupcake recipe, and Martha’s basic buttercream recipe (both recipes divided in half).  I’ve made Billy’s vanilla cupcake recipe before, but this is the first time I’ve got to taste them – I love them!  I’ve been having a hard time finding a good vanilla cupcake recipe, but I really really like this one.

I would like to try to make these again sometime, they really are super cute (well, Martha’s are, anyway!) and I’d like to perfect the beak-piping technique!

I began the task yesterday.  I used Billy’s vanilla cupcake recipe for the vanilla cupcakes, a cupcake which I had never baked before.  While I couldn’t taste-test these (as I got exactly one dozen after cutting the recipe in half), they seemed to be moist and smelled of sugar cookies.

For the strawberry cupcakes, I used Sprinkles’ strawberry cupcake recipe.  I’ve made these once before and noticed the strawberry taste isn’t very strong.  They also don’t turn out very pink.  My friend specifically said that she didn’t want a very strong tasting strawberry cupcake, so I thought these would be fine.

For the frosting I used the Basic Buttercream recipe which can be found in February 2009′s issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine, or at her website.  I had never made this frosting before, but was extremely pleased with the results.  It was very smooth, a perfect texture I would say, and it was not too sweet.  In fact, it was quite buttery.  I will definitely be using this buttercream recipe again in the future.  I used the recipe in its entirety for these two dozen cupcakes and had just approximately 1/2 cup leftover.

Above are the vanilla cupcakes, below are the strawberry cupcakes.  They are not the best photos as I photographed these in the morning and can never get good lighting in the house in the morning for taking food photos.

This the first time the Cupcake Courier has really been used, so I had to take a photo of it as well!

I personally did not get to taste-test any of these cupcakes because I made exactly the right amount!  I can’t wait to hear if everyone enjoyed them!

I did like Amy Sedaris’ recipe, and would use it again for my next batch of vanilla cupcakes. However, the addition of Bakerella’s favorite buttercream made it too sweet; next time I would add a dash of salt to her buttercream recipe.

And of course a bright red maraschino cherry sits on top. Once again, you can use any chocolate cupcake recipe to make these cupcakes, and also any vanilla frosting. It might even be a good idea to replace the milk in the vanilla frosting with coconut milk for extra coconut flavor.

These are the chocolate ones. They’re not as pretty as I wanted them to be, but they are definitely tasty. They’re chocolate cupcakes, filled with whipped cream and frosted with a Lindt chocolate ganache.

See the inside of this cupcake here.

I really like how the vanilla cherry ones look. They’re vanilla cupcakes, filled with whipped cream, frosted with vanilla buttercream and topped with a maraschino cherry.

This is the first time I’ve ever baked with nut & party cups and I have to say that I liked it! I think that the cupcakes are generally bigger with the nut & party cups. I also cut a small slit at the top of the cup before I filled them up so that it could be easily unwrapped. See the inside of this cupcake here.

I used Wilton’s bismark tip for filling the cupcakes (which is a brand new toy), and found that this made it incredibly easy to fill them.

Now I know what you’re saying, I should be putting my efforts into this month’s Iron Cupcake Earth challenge, but I’m finding the challenge ingredient to be pretty difficult! I don’t have many days left now, so I’ve really got to get to work if I want to be a part of the competition this month.