Cotton Candy Cupcakes

A few months ago I heard of this show called "Cupcake Wars" and had no idea what it was.  My friend Dawn told me about it, and was very surprised that I didn't know what it was.  Of course I had to DVR it and watch it, and now I'm addicted.

I have to say that 1) it's sort of the same thing over and over again, which gets old and 2) I'm not really into making "Shock Value" cupcakes - they need to taste good (i.e. no fried chicken and bbq sauce inside) and be sweet, the way that cupcakes are supposed to be.  3) I sort of hate the fact that they are supposed to rush around, making a batch of cupcakes in 40 minutes.  I mean, seriously?  Let's honor the art form! 

Sometimes though, they do some pretty cool things.  On a recent episode, one contestant made Cotton Candy cupcakes where she used cotton candy sugar for her Italian Buttercream.  I made the mistake of mentioning this to my good friend Andy, who decided that this was the perfect flavor for his upcoming birthday celebration.

There are really no recipes online for cotton candy cupcakes other than a few made-with-a-box recipes and I'm not a huge fan of those types of recipes.  So I decided to make my own!!!

I am so very lucky that my good friend Joe gave me a zillion cupcake liners that fit my cupcake pans perfectly!  Hooraay for former professional bakers!!

You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find cotton candy when you're not at the fair!  Luckily I work across the street from the mall, which has a candy store, and the gentleman working there was able to point me in the right direction.

I decided to start with a basic white cake recipe, since I happen to love this particular white cake recipe!  I had a really tough time with the egg white separation process, but it's all good. . .

I love the look of the vanilla and milk mixed together - you can't really see it in this picture though.

Of course you have your separate dry ingredients, sifted altogether.  I wish I knew how to keep my sifter from getting rusty!!

I really love using my hand mixer to beat my egg whites to stiff peaks.   It's my favorite thing.  :)

Pink and blue are maybe too predictable, but I thought they were pretty standard cotton candy colors.

I wanted to keep some of the cake white, so I separated and mixed 3 different colors for the cupcakes.

I then dropped 3 different drops into each baking cup.  These are definitely some high maintenance cupcakes!!!

Then I swirled the batters because I didn't want them to be "blobs" of color.

They baked up so pretty, I could not have been happier!

Now time for the frosting.  I knew I wanted to make 2 different colors - so what colors should I choose?  Steve chose Blue Raspberry & Pink Vanilla for me.

I love making swiss meringue buttercream, but I guess I should have tried the Italian Buttercream like they did on Cupcake Wars.  Although the cotton candy sugar made the icing a bit more "tacky," it didn't really do anything for the taste.  Here they are, ready to be frosted! 

 Oh, lucky me - the cotton candy is also pink and blue!

 I had all of my tools, ready to go!  I was just waiting for the cupcakes to cool. . .

I frosted half in pink and half in blue!  I topped them with a swirl of cotton candy.  They are SO pretty. 

Although these are lovely to look at, they certainly don't taste anything like cotton candy.  They are very delicious white cupcakes with a very tasty, light buttercream on top.  The cotton candy ended up absorbing some of the moisture out of the buttercream and got all crusty. 

Oh well!!  I'll keep working on the recipe. . . and everyone definitely enjoyed eating them!!!