Cupcakes, Baby!

To celebrate Karen's birthday, Shelly and I decided on cupcakes. We had 50 candles on the buffet table so we weren't tied to a cake with candles. With cupcakes no one has to cut the cake, they are easy to grab, less chance of fire damage. Cupcakes are cute and we could have three flavors. I'm not sure why I am rationalizing this to you but anyway there was a method to our madness. Speaking of rationalizing...I felt like a priest at the party with guests coming up to me all evening saying, "I had three, I had every size and flavor, I'm sorry I ate all your cupcakes", yadda, yadda. No one needed to confess to me! They. were. addicting.

My niece Hana makes frosting and has her own cake decorating tips. I asked her to help us out with the frosting. She came to my place Saturday armed with her Mom's Kitchen Aid mixer.
I am going to share her recipe with a little disclaimer. She made it, she eye-balled measurements and I was merely in the way.

Gram's Butter Cream Frosting
1/2 c. Crisco-scant
1/2 c. butter soft
1 tsp. vanilla
4 c. powdered sugar
2 T. milk
After Hana mixed the butter and Crisco she added the powdered sugar, about a cup at a time. It needs to be whipped a long time. It is almost like whipped cream in that toward the end Hana was really careful not to over whip but to whip enough. Occassionally she'd stop the mixer and drag a fork through the frosting and see how it hung on to the fork. It was science people and I am just sharing what I watched Hana do to make the frosting. We made three batches!
I had baked strawberry, dark chocolate and traditional white cupcakes in two different sizes. We used pink and white frosting. Some were swirled and some were pink frosting with white 'k's. Towers of cupcakes, cupcakes under domes, cupcakes, cupcakes everywhere!

Last pics were taken by the Snapsister, that is my sister, Jodi, in the Party Barn.
Oh and I want a Kitchen Aid mixer for my big birthday so I can make buckets of this frosting. I'll just roll through the next decade!