This weekend Taylor had her 3rd 6th birthday celebration.  I don’t know how birthdays have gotten to be so spread out in this household, but it just happens that way when you have family all over the east coast.  It just so happens that we very often visit family right around both girls’ birthdays so we celebrate the birthday multiple times.  I don’t always have big birthday parties, but this year I told the girls they could both have a party.  I like to have them at our house and I like to do the food, but I am open to having someone come in to entertain or do a special event with the kiddos.  So Taylor wanted to have a painting party and my friend Karen did her thing and we had 15 girls with easels in my kitchen painting Rapunzels.  They did a great job and had a great time.  It got a little bit crazy after they were done painting but at least no one got hurt:-).

Here is a picture of part of the class and Karen up front painting her Rapunzel.  I didn’t ask any of the parent’s if I could post the kids pics so I think this one is fuzzy enough that we should be ok…plus I shot it from behind so we really don’t see anyone’s face.

Here is a shot of the cupcakes and the table with all of the food.  Notice the strawberries that are on the table…that is a recipe I will post another day – loved them…strawberries stuffed with a cream cheese mixture…yum.

This picture was taken during Hurricane Irene rolling through our area.  We didn’t get hit too hard and it sure looks sunny out, but the weather was really pretty nasty out.  As you can sort of see all of the furniture has missing pillows….It’s somewhat ironic because Taylor was born right when Katrina was ripping through Louisiana so I thought it was pretty interesting that Irene was going to hit right at the time of her party.

This is the cupcake stand I bought at a garage sale a few weeks ago for a dollar…not too shabby, huh?  There are Funfetti and Chocolate Buttermilk cupcakes on the stand – each with a Vanilla Buttercream Frosting.  I made the mistake of saying off the bat “Who wants a Funfetti cupcake?” and every single child raised her hand….then I said – OK, but who wants chocolate and that split the group up a bit.  I will post the chocolate cupcakes next week.  They turned out great, too.

The Funfetti cupcake recipe is from Jessica at How Sweet It Is.  She loves sprinkles and has lots of great original recipes.  This is a super recipe and you could certainly use this recipe without the sprinkles, but I am not sure why you would need to leave out the sprinkles.?….??  They are very vanilla-y(love) and mine were pretty dense – kind of like a pound cake.  I loved them like that because they really held up nice to the frosting.  They had a bit of a crunch on the top, and the insides were extremely moist.  Cupcake decoration and wrappers are from AC Moore.

Cupcake cross-section.

These were definitely a hit and the frosting was wonderful, too.  I have learned that in order to get your frosting really fluffy you need to just let it whip in the mixer for a long time.  I have also learned that using heavy cream in the frosting really makes it fluffy…this frosting was great and not too sweet – just perfect, really.

Homemade Funfetti Cupcakes

How Sweet It Is

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Prepare 12 muffin tins

1 stick of softened butter – I usually let it sit on the counter along with the eggs for 1-2 hours

1 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 TBS vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour (I actually used cake flour, but would probably use AP next time.)

1 tsp baking powder

1/3 cup whole milk

1/3 cup assorted brightly colored sprinkles – I used jimmies but she uses the little tiny sprinkles (we ran out of those)

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add eggs one at a time and finally the vanilla.

Combine dry ingredients in a separate bowl and mix them together with a whisk until combined.  Add dry ingredients alternately with the milk until all is combined.  Fold in the sprinkles.

Pour into cupcake tins and fill 2/3 of the way full. Bake for 18-20 minutes.

Whipped Vanilla Buttercream

1 cup of unsalted butter – softened – I like to use unsalted butter in my frosting because it has a higher fat content and I think it makes for a better frosting…just add a litle more salt if you do use it in place of salted in a recipe.

6-8 cups of confectioners sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/8 tsp salt

1/2 cup heavy cream.

Beat the butter until creamy and slowly add the sugar, vanilla and salt.  Add the heavy cream and beat until fluffy – 3-4 minutes.

Enjoy!