Happy New Years Eve! And a New Frosting Recipe
In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t made many cupcakes recently. I don’t know if I just got burnt out or what, but I’ve been making more bars and cookies recently. Bars are especially low maintenance which makes them so much easier to make than cupcakes. But cupcakes will always hold a special place in my heart. And I’ll continue to make them.
I actually made these cupcakes earlier in the year for a weekend getaway to a friend’s family lake house. I thought these photos with the sprinkles were perfectly festive for New Years Eve! Hubby and I are off ringing in the new year in Las Vegas with a big group of friends!
Since it’s our first trip to Vegas, I’m sure we’ll have a bunch of fun and plenty of stories to share when we get home. But for now, lets talk more about cupcakes. For these cupcakes, I used a classic chocolate cupcake recipe but I decided to try a new frosting recipe.
I used the new neon colored cupcake liners that have been in the grocery store this year. I love them because in general, the Wilton cupcake liners that come in a bag at stores like Michaels are cute, but they always seem to be a bit off in size. The cupcake liners that I order online are great – vibrant colors and the perfect size – but they’re a bit pricey. By default, I mostly use the classic pastel colored liners that come in the round plastic container, but recently, they’ve had these neon colored ones that are great. I can’t get enough of them!
This frosting has a great bakery-frosting flavor. It’s very sweet and everyone really enjoyed it. It had a decent amount of stiffness that was perfect for piping onto cupcakes as well. I will definitely be making this frosting again.
Dawn's Buttercream
Ingredients:
1 cup Crisco
1 pound powdered sugar
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons meringue powder
Directions:
Cream shortening, water and flavoring.
Add powdered sugar and meringue powder. Mix until blended.
Add additional water until you reach the desired consistency. If you want really white icing be sure to use a clear extract. Vanilla extract will make the icing off white.
Recipe from Cooking with Carrie
I am Jen the Beantown Baker. Engineer by day and baking maven by night. Hubby serves as my #1 fan and official taste tester. We got hitched back in 2006. Barefoot. In the sand. With the waves crashing behind us. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. 
I wish I could run home & bake these right now! They look so delicious & how could you go wrong with apples & cinnamon? I can’t wait to try these soon.
They look so good! I LOOOVE the cute apple backround too! 🙂 🙂
These look great!
I made these from Katie’s blog in the fall and took them to a school function. One of my student’s dads ate several of them. A few weeks later I made chocolate chip cookies because they’re usually a hit with everyone there, and the same dad was like “awww. where are those apple bars? I was hoping for those again.” 🙂 They are truly wonderful!
I agree! These are amazing. I send baked goods with hubby about once a week and these got so many more comments than usual. I’m actually making them again this weekend.
I saw that recipe last year, and I wish I had made them. They look so good.
Free manual labor in exchange for apple bars? Sounds like a deal to me. I’ll have to offer that up next time I have to call a plumber 🙂
Scott made these tonight and they were AMAZING! Seriously, AMAZING!
I made these this weekend….they were fantastic! At 10 last night Sam had to ask me “are you still eating that apple cake?” Yes. I was. I saved one more piece for after work today!
Oh, my dad would love these. I have an apple bread recipe that he always requests. I’ll bookmark this one to try too. Thanks.
Michelle
http://oneordinaryday.wordpress.com/
I made these yesterday and think they are fabulous! So gooey, but so much better the next day! Thankyou for sharing! =)