Pink Buttercream Chocolate Cupcakes

I love to bake. I haven’t done it for a while but I love it. Hate to cook, love to bake. I always have. My Grandma used to make cookies and cakes with me all the time. A few years ago I started to get back into it. I made some homemade cakes and cookies. Then life just got in the way. Last Christmas I finally got a good mixer with a KitchenAid mixer deal. I was using a hand mixer my roommates in college gave me that their parents bought when they first got married in the 70s so it was time for an upgrade.

I am hoping to work on a few things. I would really like to find a good Royal Icing recipe and get better at decorating cookies. I would also like to learn more about making cakes and cupcakes as well as decorating them. I think it is a lot of fun and you can make them however you want to.

So this past week I decided to make some cupcakes for Bunco. I also wanted to make some bigger ones as well. I really wanted to make chocolate ones. I get these ideas in my head and can’t get rid of them. So what does a novice baker do to find a good recipe? Pinterest of course!

So I made these chocolate cupcakes. I think they turned out good but I think if I made them again I would add chocolate chips to them or something. I liked how light they felt. I didn’t feel like I was eating a heavy dessert which was nice.

Now for the frosting. I knew I wanted a buttercream one. I decided pink would be a good choice too. I used the Wilton Icing Colors which are gels because it works better for baking and I have more choice over colors than just your standard food coloring you can get at the grocery store.

I decided to go with this buttercream recipe and ended up using 1/2 butter and 1/2 Crisco because it would be firmer that way. After I was finished and gave it to my taste tester, he said he could taste the Crisco. So I added some milk and some Almond flavoring and it ended up tasting a lot better that way.

I made the frosting and then went to look for my icing tips. I am not sure what happened but I could only find one of them! I had the 104 and it is the petal one. So I couldn’t do what I was planning to do. I decided to look online for some ideas. I played around with it and this is what I got.