Babe, I hate your cupcakes!

   So Dan and I have this little joke about the show cupcake wars and what kind of competitor I would be if we were ever on the show.  I like to think I would be the ass-kicking underdog and my hubby is my adversary, the overly critical snooty judge.  "Babe, I hate your cupcakes" he says.  But of course in the end I win him over along with the other judges.  Well with cupcakes like the ones I made this week I have a feeling I took a step in the right direction.
   Dan is one of a growing number of adults going back to school and I've encouraged him to take advantage of the college experience so what does he do but go and become the president for the Model UN team at his school.  Being the first lady of the Model UN team I have certain responsibilities.  Among them is baking copious amounts of cupcakes for his first BAKE SALE.  Of course being the domestically inclined sort that I think I am I took it upon myself to make not just your average cupcakes.

The first batch is a Vanilla Sprinkle Vertigo cupcake and the second batch is a Red Velvet Mummy-Cake recipe(Sadie made-up the names.).  You may say, "Anita, you're nuts if you think I can make cupcakes that look like that!" but you're so wrong.  Here's the secret......Box Cake Mix.  Don't worry about making cupcakes from scratch if you don't have the time.  I know Martha would be very upset with me for saying this but the box ones taste great too.  Now that you have the cake taken care of you can spend all your time making the frosting and decorating cuz that's the fun part anyway.
I took the Wilton cake decorating class a couple of years ago and it was one of the best things I've ever done.  Plus I was on a sugar high for three months that year from all the frosting I sucked off my fingers.  I get my frosting recipe from them but you can use whatever works for you.
If you don't have piping bags just throw the icing into ziplock bags and cut a small tip off one corner.  For the swirl just make the opening larger.

So the Vertigo cupcakes are totally easy.
1.  Pipe a swirl in orange on top, starting from the outside edge working in, using whatever tip strikes your fancy.
2.  Trace around the edge of the orange swirl with black frosting.  (For black frosting start with a chocolate frosting and add the food coloring to that.  If you start with white you'll use a ton of food coloring and only get grey.) 
3.  Sprinkle!  Just make sure to sprinkle them while the frosting is fresh.  The extra moisture will hold the sprinkles on. The added touch is that I put orange and black sprinkles into the cake mix before I baked the cupcakes.  Now there's even a little colorful surprise when you bit into them.
VOILA!  VERTIGO CAKES!

Not bad huh?  Well the Mummy-cakes are just as easy, they just require one more color of icing.
1.  Frost them with a thin layer of black frosting.
2.  Using a flat tip, pipe stripes in white across the bottom 1/2 and top 1/4 of the cupcake surface.  This is his wrappings.  Don't worry about making them perfect.  He has been in a tomb for thousands of years.
3.  Using a tip with a circle opening pipe two orange circles for the eyes and two more on top of those in black for the pupils.
LOOK AT THAT!  YOU MADE A MUMMY-CAKE!

Craft on!
Anita

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