Garden Party - Part 2

Today I'm bringing you the second half to my Garden Party posts.  If you checked out my last post, you found decoration tutorials for the garden cupcakes, smash cake, and cupcake flower pot signs.  Today, I'm following up with the recipes I used.  Again, you want the cakes to be just as delicious as they are beautiful.  I really appreciate when people say they taste as good as they look, and strive to always have cupcakes that are creative and delicious. At the end of the day, most people want something that tastes good.

As I mentioned, I had 60+ cupcakes besides the smash cake.  I ended up baking 4 different types of batter. For two of the cupcake flavors, I used my go to chocolate and vanilla recipes.  For the last cupcake flavor, I went with strawberry.  I enjoyed my previous strawberry cake recipe, but it was pretty labor intensive and there were some strawberry chunks in the cake, that not everyone enjoys. I decided to try a simple, but delicious, doctored cake mix for the cupcakes.  The strawberry flavor was not quite as strong as expected, but delicious when paired with a strawberry buttercream. I had already decided I wanted to pipe roses on the strawberry cupcakes, so I needed pink buttercream anyway - perfect solution!

Here's my recipe:

Strawberry Cake ingredients:

• 1 box Pillsbury strawberry cake mix
• 3 oz strawberry Jello gelatin (small box)
• 1 cup milk
• 1/3 cup oil
• 4 eggs

Strawberry Cake instructions:

• Preheat oven to 350F
• Mix cake mix, milk (replaces water in recipe), oil, and eggs (one more added from box directions)
• Beat in gelatin and mix until no lumps
• Lin muffin tin with cupcake liners
• Fill liners 3/4 full
• Bake 15-18 mins

Strawberry Buttercream ingredients:

• 1/2 cup Crisco vegetable shortening
• 1/2 cup butter
• 8-10 tsp prepared strawberry Kool-aid or fruit juice
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 lb powdered sugar

Strawberry Buttercream instructions:

• Beat together shortening and butter until light and fluffy
• Mix in vanilla and Kool-aid (starting with 8 tsp)
• Beat in powdered sugar adding around 1/3 lb at a time
• If to dry, add additional Kool-aid, 1 tsp at a time

That just left me with a smash cake to bake.

Now the birthday girl was having a reaction to eggs, so I was attempting an egg-free recipe.  I decided to start testing out recipes early that week.  I had a lot more trouble than I expected!  I tried out around FOUR recipes, each one I found issues with texture, taste, or both.  Finally I found a super easy recipe on Pinterest that worked really well.  All it takes is Sprite and Funfetti mix!  You may have seen this "Skinny Funfetti" recipe online, I found it through the blog Six Sister's Stuff. I thought the birthday girl might enjoy the sprinkles from the Funfetti when smashing into it.  This recipe doesn't require any added milk, butter, eggs, etc, so it is healthier.  You can even use Sprite Zero or Diet Sprite.  

It's pictured here with white cake mix for a test run, but went with Funfetti for actual smash cake

Eggless Cake ingredients:

• 1 box Pillsbury Funfetti cake mix (or white)
• 12 oz Sprite

Eggless Cake instructions:

• Preheat oven to 350F
• Prepare cake pan/muffin tin (whichever you want to use, they make great cupcakes too)
• Beat together Sprite and cake mix until no lumps
• Cook per box directions for your size cake/cupcake (or use Wilton's baking time/batter chart)

Hope you've enjoyed this two part series on my blog!  Hopefully you've found some delicious and creative ideas for your next party.  I'm really excited about a post I just finished up for Friday - light and fluffy DREAMSICLE cookies!  You have to try these! I've also already started working on toppers for this weekend's elephant cakes for a little boy's first birthday.  Make sure and follow me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook for a sneak peak of the elephant cakes this weekend!