Thursday, May 1, 2014

Camouflage Cupcakes

Not only do I live in a house with two young boys but my husband is in the military. Needless to say I am surrounded by various forms of camouflage. The kiddos were asking for cupcakes and I was trying to come up with some fun thing I could do for St. Patrick's Day. (Yes this post is way late!) Since I was the world's most boring Mom and just gave my boys cereal for breakfast, not even Lucky Charms or anything, I thought this would be something fun and still green to celebrate and make up for my lousy holiday spirit! Needless to say I had happy pinch free kids.

Camouflage Cupcakes

15.25 oz Yellow Cake Mix

1/3 cup Oil

3 whole Eggs

1 1/4 cup Water

Cupcake liners
Piping bags or Ziplock bags with a chip clip or twist tie

Food Coloring: black, brown, green

*for brown you can add cocoa powder to the batter instead of the food coloring, my youngest doesn't like chocolate so we used food coloring so he could enjoy them too.

Preheat the oven to 350˚ F. Follow the directions on the back of the cake mix: Beat the cake mix, water, oil, and eggs in a large bowl on low speed for 30 seconds, then on medium speed for 2 minutes, scraping the bowl occasionally.

Fill two muffin tins with 21 cupcake liners. Divide the batter into three medium bowls. Don't use small ones like me and make a mess!

(I grabbed one of my hubby's old uniforms to try to get somewhat close to the colors.)

Add several drops of food coloring to each bowl of batter and mix well to make an even color.

(Ok, so the colors aren't close at all but we are going to pretend ;) )

After I made these and struggled getting good proportions with a spoon, I thought it would have been so much easier to have used a piping bag like I do for my frosting. (See picture below. I always cheat and use a gallon ziplock bag. Fill one corner then twist it up and use a chip clip to seal the bag and snip the end.)

Drop the batter by teaspoonfuls into the cupcake liners. Try to alternate where you drop the different colors making a speckled pattern with the batter.

Bake the cupcakes in the preheated oven for 18-22 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven to a cooling rack. Allow to cool for 5 minutes in the pan then remove to cool completely.

Frosting

1 cup butter or margarine (2 sticks), softened
8 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup warm water (or milk)
4 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp kosher salt

In a mixing bowl add butter and 1 cup of powdered sugar. Beat with an electric mixer until blended. Add in another cup of powdered sugar, the vanilla extract, salt, and 1-2 Tbsp of warm water. Beat with the mixer until well blended. Add another cup of powdered sugar with 1 Tbsp of water and beat. Then repeat with the remaining ingredients. Beat an additional minute until the frosting is fluffy and all of the sugar is incorporated. At this point feel free to add any food coloring you want. Since my cupcakes had lots of color, I left the frosting white. Transfer the frosting into a piping bag. Decorate cooled cupcakes.