Cupcake Happiness

You know how last week I posted about things that make me happy?  And I included pictures of the prettiest cupcakes I've ever seen?

So.

Last night, I got a wild hair up my butt to give those cupcakes a try.  I mean, afterall, today is Easter and all things colorful, right?  So why not?

Ingredients:

• Two boxes of white cake mix
• Gel food coloring
• Liquid chickens
• Vegetable oil
• Water
• Patience.  Lots of patience.  Lots and lots of patience.

I made the boxes of cake mix according to directions and split it between four bowls, then I added approximately half a tube (no, I'm not kidding - I wanted bright colors) of gel food coloring.

Oooh...pretty

Looks like a painter's palette, doesn't it?

Mixing up the batter was the easy part.  Next came dolloping (is that a verb?  Well it is now) the batter into the cupcake tins.  This is where I really needed by patience pants on, because I'm generally *over* baking projects at just about this point.  I'd rather eat raw dough/batter of pretty much any kind than have to go through the whole process of baking.  I donned my patience pants and went to work.  It took me an entire half a season (five episodes) of Fringe on Netflix to complete the dolloping and baking.

Three colors done, one to go

And...the first two dozen are ready to go in the oven

While the first batch was baking, I was prepping the asparagus for today's feast.  I couldn't find any of the small, pencil-sized asparagus to wrap in bacon for today, so I had to peel a bunch.

The timer finally dinged eighteen minutes after the cupcakes went in and this is what I got...

Yay!  It looks like it worked!

I'm not very good at dolloping the same amount of batter into the tins apparently, as I ended up with some really big cupcakes and some not-so-big cupcakes.  I couldn't wait to lay them out to cool and get the next batch in.

Aren't they pretty?

It worked!
And tasted good, too.  We had to try one.

The next batch went in and eighteen minutes later, I had a dozen and a half more little pieces of happiness wrapped in cupcake liners ready to be frosted.  Unlike the Bionic Cowgirl, I'm super lazy and bought my frosting in two of those easy-to-use tubs.  I dumped the frosting in a bowl and added the last half of the green gel, which didn't make it very green.  So I added the last half of the blue and yellow gels too, mixed it all up and went to work decorating the cupcakes.

Can we say "sugar high"?

The decoration is pretty run-of-the-mill boring stuff, but I can't wait to see the looks on the kids' faces when they bit into their cupcakes and find all the pretty colors.  It's kind of like a reverse Easter egg, with the colors on the inside.