I know I was meant to make some molten lava chocolate explosion thing, and really I would have loved it, however, my daughter was having a 4th grade class party at school this week and asked for little vanilla rose cupcakes. I was happy to oblige. I do understand that I am not fulfilling the bake-along this week but I thought you might like to see what we got up to! They were a big success at the class party.
We followed the White Velvet Butter Cupcakes recipe and everyone in the family had a little scoop of batter before we baked the rose cakes. 'Yum' was the universal expression. As they were for a party, we couldn't sample the actual cakes so we made a few little extras. Tess and I each ate one of the little round discs (the boys were gone to school and work so we wern't being deliberately selfish). The cupcakes were fantastic and I could easily use this as my "go to" Vanilla cupcake recipe. Then we decorated the little roses and packed them up ready to go. Tess was also meant to bring along a "surprise", which she interpreted as lollies.
One thing we learnt about decorating these little rose cakes....it looks slightly better if you put the icing gel into the groove of the rose, rather than trying to highlight the ridge of the groove (if you know what I mean). Tess then added little sprinkles of flowers, leaves, hearts. Personally, I prefer the cakes undecorated but I'm not a 9-year-old and she had a lovely time and the 9-year-olds in her class loved them. So there. Not sure about those lurid, red lolly things though. They are called 'clouds' but look like 'lips' to me. They are soft and chewy and tangy and even though they are clearly NOT food, you do find yourself trying just one more.
