Shay Shares Her Experience with Making Cupcakes on a Budget

As some of you know this past summer I started taking cake decorating classes, I have now taken up actual baking. I have recently been making pies and cupcakes. It seems cupcakes are the new rage. However, if you buy cupcakes from a bakery or specialty store they can be quite expensive. So, I figured I should learn to make more than just plain yellow or chocolate from a box. Maybe I can even make a little side money doing them for friends and family.

My mom recently bought a book called the Big Book of Cupcakes. There is just about any kind of cupcake you could want in this book. So far I've made two kinds and I'm eying another 3 that I want to try.  I made red velvet cupcakes with a marshmallow butter cream icing and blueberry-lemon cupcakes with a lemon butter cream icing.

I took the red velvet ones to work on Valentine's Day and I have to say they were a big hit. People were still talking about them the next day. I was quite impressed with myself. Did I mention these are from scratch; cupcake and icing? Now the blueberry-lemon were good but not as good as the red velvet.

The next ones will either be streusel-topped strawberry-rhubarb with strawberry whip cream topping, margarita cupcakes with a key lime whipped topping or strawberry cream cheese cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. They all sound and look good, I just can't decide which one's I want to make first.

I also made some pies from scratch recently. I made a Buttermilk Pecan Pie and just a regular old Pecan Pie. They were delish! For some reason I had in my mind that these were hard to make but they are actually very, very simple.

I'm kinda getting into this baking thing. It's fun, relaxing and you have something great to eat when you finish. I'll let you know how those next cupcakes turn out. I might be available for hire soon.

So what are some other great recipes I should try...I'm on a roll right now!