At the end of April our friends’ son, Kade, turned three. He had a birthday party in the park after his baseball game (seriously, can you imagine anything cuter than a bunch of three-year olds trying to play baseball?!), with hotdogs on the camping stove, lots of cut up fresh fruit and veggies, and a cake made by yours truly – I offered/begged his mom, and thankfully she took me up on it! She suggested a baseball-themed cake, and because Kade is super proud and excited to be on “Team Purple” (his team wears purple t-shirts), I decided to put his jersey (or a version of it) right on the cake.
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Apparently making cupcakes only once in a month is not enough cupcakes. Obviously. Also, I saw this frosting technique done somewhere (I forget where) and was looking for any excuse to try it out.
I made these a little while ago for a fundraising bake sale at work. This kind of thing is right up my alley: baking cute, individually portioned things that other people get to eat (someone’s gotta save me from eating them all myself!). Cupcakes are usually a pretty big hit at bake sales, and I’ve been wanting to make some for while, so I decided to use my favorite vanilla-flavoured yellow cake batter and then set about looking for a good frosting. I really really dislike tooth-achingly sweet powdered sugar buttercream, and Swiss meringue buttercream can be finicky to make and gets kind of expensive with all those egg whites and copious amounts of butter (plus, what to do with all the leftover egg yolks? Baking is so hard! ;) ).
Seeing local strawberries in the store is a sure sign that summer is here, but to me, it is the raspberries that signal its true arrival. Last summer I