Cupcake Extravaganza

My extremely talented cousin Helen has been making my mouth water from afar for months now with her weekly blogs about new cupcake recipes that she's trying out or old favorites that she's whipping up. She always decorates them so beautifully and posts the most scrumptious looking pictures. And she invariably tells people to come get them so she doesn't have to have them all in the house. And nearly every Wednesday I am so bummed that she lives all the way in California and I can't just pop on over for some of her famous cupcakes.

Well..... She and her husband Gordon came up to our neck of the woods to visit this weekend and what did we do? We baked cupcakes of course! She brought her mouth-watering favorites and wow, they didn't disappoint!

Here's a "Bananas Foster" cupcake: Banana cake and frosting flavored with cinnamon and rum extract, with a beautiful little banana on top.

My personal favorite was the "Tiramisu" cupcake: Butter cake (with espresso drizzled over the top) and a mascarpone/marsala/whipped cream frosting with cocoa powder dusted on top. Umm..... Yeah. Never had anything better in my life!

And the final one, which for some reason I don't have a picture of, was a dark chocolate cake with vanilla/cream cheese frosting. So simple and so divine!

Obviously Mister was excited about the cupcakes. But he is a very picky little boy. So after trying them he decided (CRAZY BOY) that he wanted just a plain cupcake with butter on it. Yep, all these amazing treats in front of him and all he wants is plain old butter on top! But after we made the adjustment he was in heaven. :)


The three finished products:

Wow, I'm so glad Helen was willing to share the recipes with us! Thanks Helen and Gordon for coming up. It was so great to hang out and visit with you guys. :)