Today we are sharing our 2nd guest review from our friend Kim! Last weekend she celebrated her 30th birthday and took on the task of baking and decorating 4 different flavors of cupcakes. Below she talks about her experience. Happy Birthday Kim!
For my 30th birthday my husband, Jesse, threw me a party. He asked me if I wanted a cake or cupcakes. I just looked at him, waited and minute and said, “Really?” with a little smirk. He replied, “Yea, that’s what I thought.” So the next step was to figure out where would we get the cupcakes?
After discussing places like Caroline’s Cupcakes (prior to hearing they were closing), IcedGems, and a couple of others, I suggested that I could make them. For Christmas, Jesse had gotten me a wonderful cupcake cook book – Betty Crocker Big Book of Cupcakes – and I thought this may be a more cost effective alternative. This way I could also choose flavors I wanted and make as many or few as I wanted, with no ordering restrictions. Besides, I used to love baking.
What I really like about this book is that it gives you recipes to make the basic cupcake flavors from scratch, or on most pages they give you the option to “use a cake mix”. I spent an evening looking through the book and choosing a few different flavors. I settled on four different ones: The Snickerdoodle (page 60), Banana-Chocolate Chip (page 72), Mini Candy Bar (the non-name brand for Butterfinger) (page 106), and the one I was most looking forward to, Mini Raspberry-Filled Chocolate cupcakes (page 110). However with the last two, I decided I was going to make them regular sized instead of minis.
So the day before the party I set most of the day aside just to bake. I decided to ask my brother to come and help because I was making so many (and sadly, unlike on Cupcake Wars, Betty doesn’t provide four assistants!) I would use the boxed cake batters, as well as some pre-made icings.
The first batter we made was the Snickerdoodle. It was easy enough, and just required a couple additions to a white cake box batter, like adding cinnamon and adjusting the ingredients. Then we made the Candy Bar batter, which was simply adding in some crushed up Butterfinger candy bar pieces to a white batter mix. Next up was the Banana-Chocolate Chip, again merely adding chocolate chips and smooshed ripened bananas. And finally the Raspberry Chocolate. For this I guess I didn’t read the “use a cake mix” box properly. It said I needed a chocolate batter with pudding. However I got a Devil’s Food batter and a box of pudding. Luckily my brother was here, and he finagled it so it worked out. After almost a full day of baking I decided to hold off and do the frosting the next morning.
The next morning, before the party, I got a jump on making a couple of the frostings and decorating all the finished cupcakes – we made about two dozen of each flavor.
The first one was the Snicker doodle. This was pretty simple – the recipe was almost exactly like icing I make on my own, except with different measurements and the addition of cinnamon. They turned out great. The decorating was simply the combination of cinnamon and sugar.
Next I made the chocolate icing for the Candy Bar cupcakes. This was just like my normal icing recipe, except adjusting some measurements. The only thing the decorations called for were more crushed Butterfinger pieces.
For the Banana-chocolate Chip I used a can of Chocolate icing, and decorated them with Banana Runts candies and a couple of chocolate chips.
Finally the Raspberry-filled Chocolate cupcakes: These were a bit more work. I scooped the centers out, filled them with some raspberry jam that I made sure wasn’t lumpy. Then pureed some thawed, frozen raspberries, and mixed it with some Whipped Vanilla icing. It was a little runnier that I had expected, but it still turned out nice. For the decorations, I placed a raspberry gummy candy on top.
All in all, they turned out great, and were a HUGE hit at the party. I even got a few people telling me they were going to pay me to make some for their own parties!
Since I did all this hard work for my party, on my actual birthday (which was Superbowl Sunday), I was treated to a Chocolate Raspberry cupcake from IcedGems Baking. Yummy!
– Review by Guest Crusader, Kim (Maryland)
Cupcake Crusaders 
That’s impressive, Kim! I’m glad you treated yourself to a cupcake that you didn’t have to make yourself when all was said and done! I want that cook book, now! I love that they give you instructions for both scratch and using a box mix.
I find that it’s difficult to add flavoring or food color to the whipped store-bought icings because they get running if they don’t stay “whipped.” So, my go-to now are any of the creamy options. They might get a little running if you are adding liquid too, but might hold up a little better.
The raspberry ones were devine and I think I had the butterfinger one as well. Guess I know who’s baking for my 30th birthday this year. 😉
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