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. 
These look amazing! I’m trying not to lick my screen looking at these pictures.
I made these last winter and they were sooooo absolutely amazing. I purposely haven’t made them since because I would eat them all! Perfect holiday treat, aren’t they?
These sound really different, unique, and delicious!
oh what i’d give for one of those as a snack right now! yum!!
OK, I have a weird question since I have texture issues.
I assume the pumpkin portion of this is similar in texture to pie filling (hence “Pumpkin Pie” part of the name)? Or is it more cake/bar-like?
These are so unique!
Mmmm pumpkin and snickerdoodle…I’m on board 🙂 I bet this is great. I love bar cookies. Easy and delicious!
I start drooling everytime I see those yet for some odd reason I wind up just making the plain snickerdoodle version. I think it’s the kids thinking the plain one is perfection. They’ve actually told me not to mess with the recipe.
~ingrid
Yes Heather – it has a similar texture to pumpkin pie.
This looks great. You have a good variety of appealing recipes. You can keep me busy baking for months.
Hope you feel better – I suffered through the flu last month and it’s definitely amazing how quickly the crappy feelings hit you!
So glad you liked my recipe! 🙂