Flower Cupcakes

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Ok, so I made some cupcakes.

And I'm going to tell you about them.

I started by oiling the in-between-spots on my muffin pans.  I learned this from my good buddy the Barefoot Contessa.  It keeps any overflow of the cupcakes from sticking.  However I forgot to oil or spray inside my cupcake papers and inside the mini-muffin cups.  So I had to pry them out with a knife and hence, they're not that pretty.

Then I made the Chocolate Sheet Cake recipe from Pioneer Woman.  I've eaten this cake twice.  Once when a friend made it, and this time made by me.  And both times it has seemed dry.  She says it translates really well to cupcakes, but I disagree.  The batter is WATERY and so its very hard to distribute it into muffin cups without making a huge mess.

I froze the cupcakes overnight because my sister's plans changed and she and her friends aren't coming over til tomorrow.  I took them out today and gave flower icing my first go!  Its actually not too hard... but I think it would be nice to have a better pastry bag.  My parchment paper bags dragged in the icing.

Sorry, I didn't get any of the process, only the finished flowers. 

I used pink decorative sugar, and chocolate sprinkles... attempting to make them look like the stamens.

(I really like the second closest cupcake on the left in this pic)   :)

A pan of all the best.

And... a few of the uglies.

My first ugly small ones.

And the the ugly big one where I kept layering icing over the first petals trying to fix my mistakes.

Ick!

And there you have it, friends!  My first attempts at flower cupcakes.  I've learned much.

The smaller ones are definitely easier.  I think if I make these for Em's shower, I'll do a large batch of small ones, but use cupcake paper like I did with the big ones.  (And use a different cupcake recipe... not the sheetcake.)

Thanks for looking!