Saturday, July 10, 2010

As girlie as cupcakes get...

Courtesy of the Betty Crocker cupcake mini-magazine, meet the Pink Champagne cupcake. The thing I like about Betty, is that she keeps it simple. Her desserts almost always involve sprucing up a mix, not starting from scratch. The downer about Betty is that, although her stuff looks cute and is very creative, the taste isn't anything to blog about (yet here I am)! She certainly has some very cute designs.

The champagne cupcakes will not be a repeat experience. The cake part simply calls for adding a cup and a quarter of champagne and some food dye. The frosting is the same with less champagne and more sprinkle pizazz:

Cake:
1 box of Betty Crocker white cake mix
(I suggest using Duncan Heines - it has a richer flavor!)
1 1/4 cups of champagne
1/3 cup of veggie oil
3 egg whites
4-5 drops of food coloring

As for the food coloring, I highly recommend the Wilton 8 Icing color set - the colors are really rich and potent. One little dip of the fork prongs into the color gel and you have your self some HOT pink cupcakes. Just see to the right for proof! The coloring set also comes with a gorgeous shade of blue and green. So much fun!!

But back to the champagne cupcakes - so I separated the icing into the Betty recipe (calling for regular champagne) and my fun experiment (with strawberry champagne!). The strawberry champagne, though creative, in combination with the powdered sugar, practically brought cavities on contact with its sweetness! The normal champagne was an interesting flavor - maybe I'm just a sucker for a old fashioned vanilla frosting!