Happy Easter!!!

Today has been a wonderful day.  My mom is in town.  I spoke to my dad this morning.  The weather was perfect for an after-church lunch at Vickery's Shem Creek.  And thanks to the inspiration from some of the other bloggers out there, I've decided to take on baking (again) and make cupcakes!  I've got a card up my sleeve today because my mom is here, and unlike me, she's an avid baker.  I am too impatient, but luckily, I have her here to admonish me when I want to open the oven and take a peek.  Sorry, but looking in from the outside just doesn't seem to be enough for me. I'm trying, though.  While the cupcakes were in the oven, mom took a nap. 

Rick's suggestion for my first cupcake adventure is to color each of them for each ACC team because he thinks that the ACC teams are cupcakes (football here, obviously), but I used the McCormick's Neon food coloring to make cool colors for the icing (and ignored him ;) ).


For the cupcakes, I used the recipe for Basic White Cupcakes from myrecipes.com.  For the icing, I used a recipe that I found on a blog that I recently started following, Pumpkin Tart, for Vanilla Cupcakes.  The result was amazing!!!  I am taking the majority of them to work tomorrow because I would probably eat them until I popped.  I gave a couple to Rick to enjoy before he heads to the Masters with his parents this week.  The recipe made 18.


Here's what I did....


Basic White Cupcakes
Ingredients

1  (18.25-oz.) package white cake mix with pudding (I used Pillsbury)

1 1/4  cups  buttermilk

1/4  cup  butter, melted

2  large eggs

2  teaspoons  vanilla extract

1/2  teaspoon  almond extract

Vegetable cooking spray

Directions
Beat first 6 ingredients at low speed with an electric mixer just until dry ingredients are moistened. Increase speed to medium, and beat 2 minutes or until batter is smooth, stopping to scrape bowl as needed.
Place paper baking cups in muffin pans, and coat with cooking spray; spoon batter evenly into baking cups, filling each two-thirds full.

Bake at 350° for 25 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pans on wire racks 10 minutes; remove cupcakes from pans to wire racks, and cool 1 hour or until completely cool.

Billy's Buttercream Frosting
Ingredients
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
6 to 8 cups confectioners' sugar
1/2 cup milk or half and half
1 teaspoon Pure vanilla extract

Directions

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter until smooth and creamy, 2 to 3 minutes. With mixer on low speed, add 6 cups sugar, milk, and vanilla; mix until light and fluffy. If necessary, gradually add remaining 2 cups sugar to reach desired consistency.  Seperate into bowls and color with food coloring.

Enjoy!