Last weekend we celebrated my nieces 1st birthday. I still can’t believe it’s been a year! Don’t you just want to pinch her cheeks?
Her parents decided to do a butterfly themed party. I got so excited because I’ve been dying to make butterfly cupcakes since I saw them on Annie’s blog. I am going to refer you to her blog on how to make the butterflies. She created a wonderful tutorial. But I will give you a couple of additional tips. I was having a hard time trying to draw out the wing. I finally got one that I really liked and decided to cut it out and trace it on a piece of paper. This worked out great, I was able to have the same looking and same sized wings. Just remember to flip the wing over so you have a right and left wing. The other thing I came up with was after I melted the candy melts in the piping bags. I decided to lay the piping bags on a heating pad. I removed the the fabric cover (glad I did cause it got messy) and set it to a medium temperature. I never had to go back and re-heat the candy melts. It was a huge time saver!
After everything got put together, I was very happy with how it turned out. When trying things for the first time there is a lot of trial and error. I was almost ready to give up but I am glad I didn’t. I did try a new recipe for the vanilla cupcakes. I loved them and will be making those again. I got it from Sweetapolita she makes some of the best looking cakes I have ever seen. This was my first time trying one of her recipes and I can’t wait to try more!
For Tori’s smash cake, I decided to do cake mix from a box. I figured hands and face will be messing it up so need to go crazy on something homemade. Of course the frosting is homemade, it’s my favorite go-to icing. It always gets great reviews!
She liked the frosting! But she ended up being one of the cleanest 1 year old I have ever seen. I’m so glad everything turned out great and Tori had a wonderful time for her first birthday.
Bakery Style Vanilla Cupcakes:
- 1 1/2 cups self-rising flour
- 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
- 2 cups white sugar
- 4 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1 cup milk
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 batch of favorite icing (sometimes I like to double it so I have a ton of frosting on top of cupcakes)
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 standard muffin tins with cupcake liners of your choice, 24 total.
- In a small bowl, combine the flours and set aside.
- In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar gradually and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.
- Add the dry ingredients in 3 parts, alternating with the milk and vanilla, ending with the dry ingredients. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated but do not over beat. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the batter in the bowl to make sure the ingredients are well blended.
- Carefully spoon the batter into the cupcake liners and fill about 2/3 full, and bake in middle of oven until tops turn golden brown and toothpick inserted into center comes out just clean (a few crumbs is okay), about 18 minutes.
- Cool the cupcakes in tins for 15 minutes. Remove from the tins and cool completely on a wire rack before icing.
Source: adapted from Sweetoplita
