Baby Shower Cupcakes

A few weeks ago I was asked to make cupcakes for a mega baby shower we were having at the office. There is most definitely something in the water there...at one point this year 9 of 140ish employees were pregnant. There are so many babies on the way that the shower was for three of the first time moms-to-be. I was given free reign over what I wanted to make. That's a lot of pressure. I wanted to go with a pink and blue theme and decided to make strawberry and blueberry cupcakes. I like to give options when I'm feeding a lot of people. 

I didn't get entirely creative. Given the number of cupcakes I was making, I didn't want to start off with a completely new recipe in case it failed miserably. I made the same base as the rhubarb cupcakes I've described a couple of times before. Instead of rhubarb I added blueberries to one batch and diced strawberries to the other. Simple as that!

The plan was to make the cooked flour frosting I love so much and use blue for the blueberry and pink for the strawberry. Logical, right? The only problem was that I had MAJOR issues with the frosting. I'm not sure what happened but when I added the butter to the cooked flour base it completely separated and got really oily and gross looking. It was really too bad it didn't work out because it still tasted delicious. In the end I had to run out to the GT Boutique down the street to clear them out of icing sugar so I could make Martha's fluffy frosting. A super basic and delicious standby. Then, of course, I ran into another issue. The No Name butter I was using was super yellow and my blue and pink frosting turned out to more like mint green and salmon. Sigh. In the end, they were still pastel colors and baby shower appropriate, but I knew that they didn't look like I'd envisioned.

No one else seemed to mind the colors. I got a lot of compliments from my co-workers, which was nice. It's always good to hear others like what you're doing. 

Coming up next - I'm attempting my first allergy-friendly baking this coming weekend. Wheat, nut and dairy-free. This should be interesting.