"The Stephanie"

Shortly after my little sister, Stephanie, moved to Raleigh a couple of years ago, she came over one day to make some "pink lemonade cupcakes."  She made them when we weren't home, and she didn't leave us ANY!  Ever since then, I've been dying to try them.

She sent me the recipe in one of those email recipe exchange chain letter things, and I recently found it.  She also recently tweeted about the flavor with our local ACTUAL cupcake-a-teer here in Raleigh.  Stephanie recently moved back to Michigan and was sad that our local shop was offering her signature flavor but she was too far away to eat any.

We belong to an organic CSA here and today they are hosting a Spring Fling event at the farm for all members.  We are all supposed to bring a covered dish, so of course it made sense for me to bring cupcakes.  What a better flavor for an outdoor summer picnic than pink lemonade?

Luckily, I texted Stephanie to see how many cupcakes the recipe made, and she told me only 12 so I doubled it.  I really needed to triple it to make a full 24.  I found these super cute liners a couple of weeks ago at Michaels and thought they'd be perfect for today.

The batter was nice and pink and baked quickly and evenly.

The frosting was a bit of a disaster.  It doesn't call for any milk or cream, so it was very dry and tough.  It was too tough to pipe and too tough to smooth across the tops.  So I dumped it all back into the mixer and added some milk.  That solved the problem.  Of course I had to make another batch because I'm quite heavy handed with the icing, and I needed a triple batch.  I think they turned out cute!

I used a bit of the leftover fondant I had from two weeks ago to add just a small, cute touch on the tops.