Festive Cupcakes

I've always loved cupcakes, so I'm happy that they're so hip now. It means cupcake bakeries cropping up all over. Before today I hadn't made cupcakes in ages, so I was mostly on the eating end of the craze. But today I baked cupcakes. This is not going to be a cupcake or cooking blog (I recommend Cupcakes Take the Cake for that), but this post is going to be a play-by-play of my epicurean endeavor.

For the cake, I used this recipe for Love Potion Cupcakes. I used margarine instead of butter, and didn't add the chocolate chunks. Here's the batter:


The recipe said to put a frozen raspberry into each cupcake after pouring the batter into each cup. I tried a couple of other techniques as well - pouring the batter over the raspberry (Fig. 1), and pouring batter in, then placing the raspberry, and covering it up (Fig. 2):
Fig. 1 Fig. 2

End of phase one:


...and clean up for phase two!


I watched Law & Order while the cupcakes baked and cooled:


I wanted to decorate them to look like fireworks. I think they look kind of like Spider-man webs, but whatever. They're red, white, and blue, so that must count for something. This sequence shows the process:


This one looks more like fireworks:


Here's how they all came out!


Eating the cupcake:


They were good! I'm rather proud of how they came out. The texture of the cake is more turgid than I'm used to. The raspberry inside is a nice touch. I don't know if it will be as good when it's not still warm. Should be fine. The frosting is where the cupcake loses points. I didn't trust myself to make my own frosting; I worried I wouldn't be able to get a good consistency. But next time I'll have to give it a go.

That wraps it up!

(Yes, I ate two. :-P )