A cupcake a day keeps the cravings at bay

Er, so this whole "being out of town the first 10 days of July" thing means I likely won't make my self-imposed blog post quota for the month. Luckily, I'm pretty sure that only matters to me, because my readers are all forward-thinking, dynamic individuals whose lives do not revolve entirely around my blog. Nevertheless, I'm an online publication junkie and if I don't publish at least a few each month, I'll develop some sort of twitch brought on by the delusional certainty that someone, somewhere might be desperately wanting to know what cupcakes I made this week.

Well, wait no longer, cupcake-loving reader! This week was a co-worker's birthday, so I naturally made some mini cakes. I don't actually know the birthday girl that well, but then when have I let that deter me from an excuse to bake? The only thing I knew about her cake preferences was that she didn't care for chocolate, and preferred fruity sweet things. As luck would have it, I'd just encountered a delicious looking apple cupcake recipe on The Sweetest Kitchen. I skipped out on the dulce de leche filling (not because I don't think it would by transcendently good, but because I got home late and was lazy), but otherwise followed the recipe precisely, so I'm not going to bother posting it here as well.

I made no changes to the composition of the cupcakes, but I did make a couple of cosmetic changes. Yes, the simple pecan on top of cream cheese frosting background is understated and elegant, but office birthday parties require more panache than elegance. I went a different way with it:

They're little apples! Which you can't really see that well because I haven't fully figured out the simple photography concept of "proper lighting." But each is red frosted with a chocolate covered pretzel 'stem' (I figured the chocolate hating b-day girl could overlook this small detail for the greater good), frosting leaves, and a gummy worm half peeking out. Actually in some ways, this picture is an improvement because the hue seems somewhat apple-y. In real life, these were more of a hot pink. I kept adding red food coloring and yet never achieved a rich, red color. After the 20th drop of food coloring, I started to have images of lab rats dying of cancer and settled on cotton candy colored apples.

So there you have it, readers: apple cupcakes. Not quite as healthy or fiber rich as their unadulterated natural counterpart, but I maintain that anything with gummy worms on it is good for one's inner child.