365 day 41 | Calgary photographer

MMMMMmmmmmmmmmmm CUPCAKES!!!!
I love a good cupcake. For real. But.... it HAS to be good. Because bad cupcakes are well just bad lol.
So I embarked on a mission to make a cupcake better than Crave (which is my FAVORITE). It took months, and some help from family and friends (but seriously who doesn't like taste testing!)
I fianlly did it. A recipe I am totally happy with.

And no I am not sharing the recipe hahahaha ;)
I joined a Christmas bake exchange this year. First time. And I'll say this - I have NO CLUE what I was getting myself into! First of all..... seriously WHO (but me) would pick CUPCAKES. Ok so we've gotten to the point where I decided what to make.
How's this next part....... 11 DOZEN. Just soak that number in. For real. It's insane. But I committed myself to it and carried on. Here's how my days went.
One day I baked I think 3.5 dozen. Something like that. To find my beautiful angelic daughter had stuck her hand in 7 of them!!! 7!!!!!
The next day I baked another couple dozen. Realized I had a bigger issue. WHAT was I going to put all these in to give them to the ladies at the exchange??? I traipsed to the dollar store... too much $$$. IMAGINE. I kept coming up with ideas... but none of them were working. SO off I went to the north to the Real Canadian Wholesale (part of superstore). Well they didn't have what I was looking for, but SCORE - they had Arizona green iced tea. Dion's FAVORITE and they are really hard to find by the case right now. So I picked up a couple flats of those and some really cheap foil casserole tins.
The next day my dad came in. That night I decided to ice what I had and freeze them so they would be yummy and fresh for everyone. So I cracked out the red icing gel I bought for this and got busy. ONLY to find it was PURPLE!!!! STOMP FEET. Grrrrrr. Got over it and kept going. Finished icing. Opened the cupboard to get something and WHAM. Container fell on the ICED CUPCAKES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well I was yelling, my dad came running in and was like 'Oh guess that means these are up for grabs'. NICE.
Then.... my plan on how to freeze the cupcakes fell through. Completely. Flattened the icing one one tin!!! there go some more....... So we decided to freeze them in the garage. Guess the cold was good for something!
So back to baking........ I kept at it all week and got rid of the red (ok purple) icing gel and replaced it with mint green. not really festive..... but not purple either!!!
At the end of the day I was ONE yes you read right ONE cupcake short. Because I had been told we also needed a dozen I got ready to go to the store. Because of course I was out of cocoa. Where I promptly got stuck on our road! Dion pushed us out and thankfully my dad was here so I did not have to drag my kids into the store - it was extremely windy and cold out. Then I returned home and finished baking!

The day of the exchange the roads were so bad... I wasn't going to go. My little car is in need of some new tires. I was not really afraid of the ice, wind, visibility or the main roads. BUT I WAS afraid of my residential street. I had already gotten stuck once in it! I did not want to be stuck in the middle of the night!
So Dion told me to use his truck. Which I now love. I didn't before - but WOW. That was awesome. Plus he has the awesome stereo..... that was cool!
We had to lay the tins in the back of the truck and cover them with a blanket. HILARIOUS.

Hope the cupcakes were worth it! AND the white icing was pretty.... it was white with crushed candy canes!

lovely purple icing.......