Cupcakes!

I've enjoyed decorating cupcakes for a few years now. I'm NOT anywhere close to being a pro. I just liked to use gel pens and make fun designs on cupcakes I baked.

Recently I've tried branching out. I began practicing using a piping bag to make decorations. The pictures above only indicate my 2nd time using them, so I have a lot of improving to do. But it's going well.

I also have started making filled cupcakes. I learned a neat trick from a show on Food Network on a pretty easy way to get filling in after you bake the cupcakes (use an apple corer to poke a hole on top, then drop in the filling and leave it open or put the little circle of cake back on to cover it!)

Last weekend I made "blueberry pie" cupcakes and cupcakes filled with nutella. The blueberry pie cupcakes are a take on the "bake sale cupcakes" that have been circulating the internet from Oprah's website, I believe. Basically, people baked cupcakes and used blue or red M&M's on top to make it look like cherries or blueberries and then piped tan icing over it to make it resemble a pie. They were super cute.

But I took it one step further... I filled the cupcakes with blueberry preserves! I did decorate some with the M&M's because they were so cute, but for people who don't like chocolate, I used blue sugar sprinkles.
To me, they were a little too sweet with the sugar sprinkles, so next time I am just going to use blue icing.

The other night, my husband requested cupcakes stuffed with strawberry preserves and chocolate icing. So that's what I made. I baked a basic white cupcake and mixed in hints of vanilla extract and cinnamon. It turned out well! He came home from work, where he took one as a snack and said, "those cupcakes were delicious!" yay! Boost to my ego.

I also decorated some with white icing to make it more like a strawberry shortcake.

I've been having a good time with the cupcakes so far. If you have any ideas, tips or tricks, send them my way!!