Alpha Gam Always

During the Wilton class I signed up to bring cupcakes for my sorority tea. I'm an Alpha Gamma Delta and recently became active in the Atlanta Alum Chapter. The idea of 24 red and buff roses (our sorority flowers) came to mind. I must have been feeling ambitious that day because I had not even learned how to pipe roses when I came up with the idea. Luckily I felt comfortable piping roses during class. I found some paisely green baking cups at Michael's (green is another sorority color) As the date of the tea was approaching I started chickening out because I thought to myself..hmm maybe I should do a dozen roses and a dozen rosettes. I mean how in the world am I going to pipe 24 roses all by myself??? Well I enlisted the help of my mama (dad came too). We enjoy being in the kitchen together and she has been wanting to see my new skills in action.

I found this recipe online for simple vanilla cupcakes. This is my first time ever making vanilla and I learned some lessons. When the recipe says to use softened butter that means to leave the butter on the counter FOREVER. And in case you are not sure how long forever is then just know you have time to drink two cups of coffee while watching two to three shows on Food network. Unfortunately I was unaware of this time frame and thought the butter would be ready after I measured out the flour, cracked four eggs, lined 24 cupcake wells, and set up a card table for extra "counter" space. Needless to say my Kitchen Aid was not liking the butter. I plan to stick with Crisco from now on because when the cupcakes came out there was butter in the wells and the bottom of the cupcakes were greasy. In this case I would like Paula Dean to do some explaining!!! (For non Paula fans - she LOVES butter!)

Lesson #2 just because you have extra batter does not mean it all has to be used. I'm just going to be honest and say it - I filled the wells up way beyond 3/4 full. Maybe parents should not be so strict with the clean your plate rule during childhood because then the children grow into adults and over fill their cupcake wells. The pans got a little messy and some had muffin tops but it was something icing could fix. My mom may disagree though since her job was to frost the cupcakes. Then we struggled to place them in my cupcake carrier...so lesson learned. (the height of the roses didn't help matters) I'm guessing it is important to use the correct size pan as well - just a guess.

Thank goodness I had lots of icing in my fridge from class. It came in real handy. All we did was tint the yellow and red darker. Remember I said in a previous postsI was happy with pastels in class. This memory came back as we were aiming for that perfect red. Now this time mom was asking why do we have to use toothpicks. We totally popped the top open a bit on the no taste red. My mom said "we will be here all day!" Yeah you are telling me mom!

Of course we made the Wilton buttercream recipe for the white frosting. As I was piping roses mom kept saying, "I don't know if I like this mixer." Who doesn't like Kitchen Aid??? Geez!

It was hard not sampling them especially after working so hard and they look so yummy. Almost too pretty to eat really. I think my parents were impressed. I had so much fun!

Everyone loved them! One sister even said, "when I first saw them I thought they were from Publix. They look professional!" Love in Epsilon Pi ladies!!!