In September of 2009, I started a cupcake adventure. If you haven't read about it yet, you can do so here. ***
It's cupcake post kind of week, and since I used my blog as a virtual birthday treat for my cousin Zoe yesterday, today I'm doing the same for my friend Jacee. Only her birthday will be celebrated in past tense, since it was in December.
Below are the cupcakes I made for Jacee's birthday...a baked version of one of my favorite (pre-pregnancy, that is) drinks: The Cuba Libre (rum & coke).
The first step is to boil a stick of butter in some cola (sounds healthy, no?)
Then, you get the dry ingredients ready...
and pour in the coke/butter mixture,
along with some cream or half-and-half (depends how naughty you are feeling).
I bought these shaped muffin papers a while back and wanted to see how well they worked. I realized later that using carbonated batter wasn't probably the best time to try them out.
I was careful to not over-fill them, since I wasn't sure what would happen as the batter baked and expanded.
While they baked, I cut up some candied lime slices for decoration.
And, as I should've suspected, these bubbled and caved much like the Root Beer Float Cupcakes did, only this first attempt wasn't a total disaster. It must be due to the carbonation in the pop. That's the only culprit I can think of.
But they were still moist...and there's nothing a little icing can't fix. ;)
A couple tablespoons of rum and some powdered sugar made up the icing.
And, naturally, each cupcake was garnished with a lime wedge...like a real Cuba Libre.
And, my cute papers worked fairly well with the batter, even though it wasn't ideal. I'd be curious to see how well they work with a commercial cake mix...
Bottoms up!