Mimosa Cupcakes

These Mimosa cupcakes remind me of our honeymoon so much.  I tried my first mimosa on our honeymoon to Antigua when almost every morning we would be offered a flute at breakfast.  We would wake up and step out into the cool island breeze and dine on an airy patio next to the beach and sip our mimosas...relaxation and luxury.  So, I will forever associate mimosas with a calm, breezy, wonderful tropical island vacation.

These cupcakes have that fresh orange tang and pack a bit of punch with their bold orange flavor.  For the frosting, I used champagne flavoring.  But, the more I thought about it the more I realized I can't really explain what champagne actually tastes like, it is more of a texture to me.  Same with the frosting.  The blend of frosting and cupcake is perfect, but I have trouble explaining exactly what it tastes like.  You'll just have to try it!

Neapolitan Cupcakes!

These are coconut cupcakes topped with chocolate, coconut, and strawberry cream cheese frosting.  This is by far my best attempt at strawberry cream cheese frosting.  I don't normally use imitation flavorings, but I tried imitation strawberry this time.  The flavor was great, but the only problem was that the extract did not color the frosting pink, and I ran out of red food coloring!  Luckily, I had a few strawberries in the fridge and so I smashed one and mixed it into the frosting - it worked!  It also added an extra punch to the flavoring of the frosting. 

I also don't normally use cocoa powder.  All my chocolate cupcakes are made with melted Baker's or Ghirardeli (my favorite!) chocolate.  But, I didn't feel like doing the extra dishes it would take to melt chocolate (making 3 different flavors of frosting already produces way too many dishes - dishes are the only thing I don't like about baking) and I had a trustworthy recipe using cocoa powder.  It turns out, I liked the cocoa powder in the frosting!  And, it made it easier to pipe than adding melted chocolate.  Another surprising success!

An Easter Cupcake and My First Attempt at Cake Pops

These are my Chai Cupcakes topped with Cinnamon Buttercream, chocolate birds nests, and carrot cake blue bird eggs.  I melted chocolate and piped it into free-form birds nests.  At the time, I was also making my first attempt at cake pops for our family Easter dinner.  So, I used the extra cake pop batter to roll out the mini bird's eggs and dipped them in white chocolate. 

My first attempt at the now-popular cake pops was a success!  An interesting and time-consuming task, but a successful one with rave reviews!