i love cupcakes!

i'm not a very good cook. i have a short attention span, don't pay attention to details, and get flustered easily when i have multiple pans going at once.

that being said, i'm apparently very good at making cupcakes. everyone raves about how fabulous my (cake mix and purchased icing) cupcakes are, and i still can't figure out what it is i do that makes mine taste so much better than the ones other people make (how DO you screw up a cake mix? i've never understood). i'm pretty specific about my supplies - i use brand name cake mixes, and a specific store brand of icing that's not nearly as sweet as most, and my cupcakes always turn out super moist and yummy.

lately i've discovered a few fun cupcake/cake blogs, and while they're WAAAY fancier than anything i make, they're so much fun to read! the cake journal has some neat tutorials, including this one for a simple and easy cupcake stand that i MUST try making. and cupcakes takes the cake seems to find the most amazing cupcakes to show off, it's total eye candy!

i made cupcakes friday night, and iced them saturday, and then felt too crummy to go to the potluck on saturday night that i'd baked them for, and now i have LOTS of cupcakes! i took some to friends tonight, and they were very appreciative!

i should take some better pics tomorrow, cause the ones i took before i left weren't very good - only this one turned out -

mini halloween cupcakes! i bought the sprinkles at ross when i was in portland, and they've little gravestones, ghosts, pumpkins and bats. so fun.

i made these cupcakes early in the summer for a potluck that i DID feel up to attending

and i obsessed quite a lot about how orange my red sprinkles turned out... i was rather disappointed!

that's pretty much my standard cupcake - candy in the middle and fun sprinkles around them. i did do a super intricate batch once for a friend who got married, her wedding colours were blue and silver, so i made cupcakes to bring to work with blue sprinkles and silver hearts on top - and i made the chocolate hearts in a mold, then silver leafed them! super time consuming!

i really love cupcakes, whether they're real or vinyl.