Happy Monday everyone! I can’t even express how happy I am that the Raven’s won last night (Baltimore born and raised, hon!) – sorry, 49ers fans. I hope everyone’s recovered from screaming and chanting and eating way too much last night. Now, on to cupcakes.

There are no words to describe how incredibly perfect these cupcakes are: you just have to eat one. I first made these over the summer, shortly before I started this blog, and I made the mistake of baking a full batch – the recipe comes from a cupcake shop, so it already yields an abnormal amount of cupcakes, plus I made them mini cupcakes, quadrupling the yield, and (if I haven’t mentioned this already) I have the astounding ability to make cupcake batter stretch twice as far as it’s supposed to, even if I follow the recipe exactly and fill the cups up to the very top. Even so, these are possibly the best cupcakes I’ve ever made.

The most frustrating part by far, however, was the frosting. When I first made these, it took two attempts and left one of my pans coated in rock hard sugar. I also had to buy three bake-sale type large foil trays to house the cupcakes that wouldn’t fit in my 8 largest Gladware containers. But, I emerged from the project as a more accomplished baker, being able to claim that I’ve made frosting that requires the use of a candy thermometer.

Note: I made a third of the cupcake recipe, and a half of the frosting recipe. I also like to make these cupcakes as girly as possible by adding 8-10 drops of red food coloring to the frosting and sprinkling the tops with edible pearls.

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