Cupcakes for Mardi Gras.

[eyesroll]

My school's National Lawyers Guild chapter is raising money to go to New Orleans for Spring Break to work with Common Ground Legal Aid. I went last year, and won't be going this year, but I am contributing to the bake sale tomorrow.

These are based on the vanilla cupcake recipe from Amy Sedaris. I tried it once and the cakes were way too dense. So I adapted the recipe by adding an extra egg (which makes them good for mardi gras!) and fluffing up the whites. This worked nicely.


Preheat oven to 375. Line 24 muffin cups with liners.

Separate 3 eggs. Whip up the eggs with 1/4 tsp cream of tartar until soft peaks form. Set aside.

Cream together 1 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter, and 1 3/4 cups of sugar. Add the egg yolks and 1 1/4 cup milk.

Sift together 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 2 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder, and 2 1/2 cups of flour. Add the dry to the wet in small batches until everything is well blended. Add 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract, then gently fold in the egg whites.

Fill each muffin cup 2/3 full (hint: A one-ounce disher, slightly overfull, works well for this). Bake for 18-20 minutes, until light brown and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool completely.

Mardi Gras Frosting:

Whip together 1 stick butter, 1 pound powdered sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 2-4 tbsp cream, to desired thickness. Divide into thirds.

Color 1/3 with 12 drops green food coloring.
Color 1/3 with 5 drops blue and 7 drops red food coloring.
Color 1/3 with 15 drops yellow food coloring.

Frost 8 cupcakes in each color.

If you want, sprinkle "beads" across some of them.

Sell to fellow students.

[hippywife]

1. Hope it's a great success!

Everyone likes sweets!

I listened to Amy's book read by her on CD. The DH and I both cracked up so many times! Sometimes it was a little hard to tell if she was serious or not. :rofl:

[yellerpup]

2. How festive!

You've got your party going already! Have fun.

[wakemeupwhenitsover]

3. I love cupcakes. I don't know why, but I like them way

better than cake. Maybe because it's my own personal mini cake.

Hope it's a great success! I'll bet yours go first.

[eyesroll]

4. My baked goods sell pretty well at school.

I've done a few bake sales--I made brown-eyed susans for a breast cancer awareness/fundraiser sale. Packed them in bags of two. Nobody got the joke. (Let's just say my SO began pairing up the cookies and pointing out that certain pairs looked like me, exes, actresses, etc.) But they sold well.

[Stinky The Clown]

5. You're good people, you are!

!!!!

[supernova]

6. Man those sound yummy!

I agree with you about cupcakes being more fun than regular cake. I'm a hard core pie girl, but I always find it hard to pass up cupcakes. :-)

Maybe it's something about it being just right-sized bite, smaller than a piece of cake, but still feeling like you had a good sized sweet. Then there's the ratio of icing to cake which is often better than in full layer cakes. More icing is always good. :-)

Hope you have a successful fundraiser for such a good cause.

[eyesroll]

7. Update: The law school provided donuts this morning, so anything resembling cake didn't sell well.

The cookies, trail mixes, and so forth did very well, though, but the cupcakes and cake slices did poorly.

Oh well...I got lots of compliments on how everything looked. (The frosting was scarily bright.) And we donated the remains to the study lounge, so I'm not coming home with a bunch of leftovers (thankfully).

[tigereye]

8. were they 'KIng" Cupcakes?

:hi:

[eyesroll]

9. There was king cake available, but my cupcakes were regular vanilla, decked out in Mardi Gras colors

:hi:

[dolo amber]

10. Is this your not-so-subtle way of reminding me I still have your muffin tin?

:eyes:

It's been almost a year...what's the statute of limitations before transference of ownership occurs? :D