Too sick to run...

...but not too sick to make cupcakes! I started feeling icky with a sore throat on Saturday and it just got worse from there, but I'm feeling a bit better this afternoon and wanted to fulfill my promise to make cupcakes for the baby shower at work tomorrow.

My favorite kind of cake is chocolate, and since I'm making the cupcakes, they are chocolate. My dad made a killer chocolate cake, and we all loved it so much that he would make it even if it wasn't anyone's birthday and we would just pretend it was one of our birthdays. It was awesome. I liked mine with chocolate frosting between the layers and on the outside, and toasted walnuts on the top. My sister preferred raspberry jam in the center and chocolate frosting on the outside. Either way, the cake always turned out perfect.

Since I haven't had the chance to grab the chocolate cookbook from my parent's house, I made Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake. I know from experience that this recipe needs to be adjusted for high altitude. I put in slightly less baking powder and baking soda and added 2ish tablespoons of extra flour and 2 tablespoons of extra milk.

The first group to go in the oven rose perfectly and look great, but they took less time to cook than expected. The cake should cook for 30-35 minutes, and cupcakes 22-25 minutes, but mine took more like 18 minutes. They definitely were not undercooked.... if anything I'm worried that the first batch is a tiny bit overcooked. The second batch spread a bit too much. I don't know why the first batch was perfect and the second batch spread too much since it was the same batter. There is an easy solution to this, which is to buy another muffin pan so I can cook them all at once. Anyway, I ate one of the reject cupcakes and it was DELICIOUS.

I made this delicious buttercream. It's SO easy! You just turn on the kitchenaid, add butter, milk, and vanilla, then add the powdered sugar 1 cup at a time (I used 4 cups total). There is no reason for icky canned frosting when frosting is this easy to make. As far as vanilla goes, I saw a vanilla bean paste at Cake Crafts. It actually smells and tastes like actual vanilla, and I love that you can see the little vanilla beans. Next time I'll use 2 teaspoons of it instead of 1.



To make them look pretty, I got some sanding sugar and cute little gum paste flowers. You can't really see the sparkly sugar in my pic because I took it with my cell phone. One of these days I'll use an actual digital camera so you can see the details better, but I can never remember where I put it. I'm a dork like that.

Here they are! They're so cute and really tasty!