Cupcakes

This past weekend I made 7 dozen cupcakes; 4 dozen for a surprise 30th birthday party and 3 dozen for a baby shower we had for my co-worker today.  On the weekend I decided to save myself some time and make all of the cupcakes at once.  I made them Friday afternoon since the party was Saturday and froze the 3 dozen that I needed for today.  The chocolate cake recipe I use freezes really well. 

Saturday afternoon I decorated the birthday cupcakes. 

My friend Amanda showed me this technique a few years ago.  You fill the side of the piping bag 1/3 full with one colour and then fill the rest of the piping bag with the second colour. This has a real nice look.

I did regular cream cheese icing and added cocoa to 1/3 of it. 

We decorated them with shaved chocolate and mini dark chocolate chips.

For the baby boy cupcakes I decided to try the same effect with blue and white icing. I used my same cream cheese icing recipe and added blue food colouring to 1/3 of it.  I use the gel food colouring; this helps to not dilute recipes.

We topped these with mini chocolate chips too.

Pipeable cream cheese recipe:

2 - 8oz soften cream cheese bricks

1/2 cup unsalted butter

2&1/2 cups of icing sugar

1tsp vanilla

(Omit 2tbsp of icing sugar for 2tbsp of cocoa to make chocolate icing)

They turned out really nice; it's funny how just changing up the piping tip and spiralling the colours together can really change the look of my same old cupcake!  I hope I've given you some new ideas!