Cupcakery

(a dangerous trio: Raspberry White Chocolate, Margarita, and Rum Punch cupcakes)

Our family recently had the pleasure of celebrating the marriage of my husband's cousins to a very wonderful guy. As many family had traveled for the event, the bride and groom hosted a day-after-the-wedding party at their new home. I'm always looking for an excuse to bake, so I offered to bring dessert. I decided to continue the theme of celebration with some spiked cupcakes. I know cupcakes are a big "trend" in baking right now, but I love them for so many more reasons than their trendiness. Here are a few if the reasons I adore them so very, very much: easy to portion control, inherently kid-friendly, simply portable, very fun to decorate, and amendable to cute dessert displays.

Anyway, on to the cupcakes! The Margarita and Rum Punch versions are spiked, but the final recipe is alcohol free.

Margarita Cupcakes

I found the recipe for these on another food blog I like to follow called Tracey's Culinary Adventures. As I LOVE lime, I was practically drooling just thinking about this recipe. I followed her recipe exactly and they were delicious! See her website for a much prettier picture that actually does these beautiful cupcakes justice! I was just lucky my photographer remembered to snap a shot before he devoured the leftovers...

Rum Punch Cupcakes

Once again, the picture leaves something to be desired, but the flavor of these amazing coconutty, rum drenched, pineapple whipped cream topped delights does not. I found this recipe on another food blog called Annie's Eats. Once again, I followed her recipe to the letter and was very pleased with the results. The only thing I added was the cherry on top for a garnish.

Raspberry White Chocolate Cupcakes

This recipe was also borrowed from Tracey's Culinary Adventures (recipe here).These cupcakes were very pretty and dainty in appearance, but quite dense when you ate them. The white chocolate cupcake was not light and fluffy like the other cakes, but heavier like a pound cake. Not bad, just different. The issue I did have with them was that I felt the frosting was too sweet - it was the kind of sweet that makes the insides of your cheeks tingle from all the sugar! I would definitely make them again, but with about 1/2 the sugar in the frosting. Also, I did skip filling them as I was running out of time. (I made use of the extra raspberry filling as a yogurt stir-in and as a topping for baked brie, yum!)