Cup a cake

I made cupcakes for a friend's baby shower last weekend.

I cheated. Totally paved the road to hell with thoughts of cupcake recipes and doing things from scratch. Nope. Time became an issue (or lack thereof) and I ended up getting some mix. Sorry Martha. But Alton Brown would totally approve.

But man, were they DEEEEELICIOUS.  I split the batch and did half with coconut frosting and half with pink frosting (my friends are having a girl).

I bought the pastel food coloring gel set from Williams Sonoma and it took about 4 teeeeeny dabs off a tooth pick to get that really soft shade of pink.  Also I think I developed tennis elbow mixing that stuff up but I'm happy with how it turned out. Swiss buttercream seems more tedious than the cream cheese and sugar type frosting but it tastes so much better and looks so much prettier. Try it sometime!

I wasn't so thrilled with how I iced the cupcakes so I need to get on with buying a decent cake icing set. Any recommendations?

The coconut ones were a hit. I didn't get to try one but, hey, the guests of honor were happy with them and that was all I hoped for.

I got all crafty for the shower too - I made those pompoms (the instructions are online from Martha and she also has a kit from Michaels for $19.99 but it was so much cheaper getting the tissue on my own and trust me you don't need any of the fancy floral wire I used staples instead) and spent WAY too much time trying to rig them so they hung correctly. But that pink is what inspired the frosting shade.  The shower went really well and I have zero cupcakes left (thankfully otherwise I'd eat them ALL myself) and I might just leave the pom poms up to keep the room festive!