Easter Basket Cupcakes

Theme of the creation process for these cupcakes...

"If at first you don't succeed..." Yeah, anyone else able to finish that line in their heads too? 
"Try, try again."
I'd seen Easter Basket cupcakes before; how hard could they be to make?
Eggs in the middle, add a handle on top and boom! Done. Simple and cute, right?

.....suffice to say my first attempt was awful.

I tried piping pink frosting in a ring around the edge of the cupcake, adding the mini eggs, and then pulling out a piece of stretchy candy (a pastel-colored Hi-Chew) into a rough basket-handle shape to decorate them. I don't have photographic proof, but....they were hideous. The candy 'basket handle' fell in the middle, the piping got uneven after I put eggs in the center of the ring.....yeah. They looked SO incredibly awful!

So I started over. This time I covered them in tinted coconut - always slightly messy-looking so suddenly my lame piping job didn't matter! 
I cut a small piece of curling ribbon and pushed both ends into the frosting with a toothpick to make it look like a basket handle. SO much better! (No, it's not edible; use rice paper if you'd rather. But tbh I'm pretty sure nobody eats plain rice paper either.)

Going to take a short tangent here -

This sums up the drawback to lots of time on social media. Did I post any pictures of the ugly-looking cupcakes? Psshh, NOPE. I didn't even take pictures at that point. All you see on this page and my Instagram feed is the finished product, not the multiple fails that were part of its creation. Editing can make the video look effortless. It wasn't. Don't compare your PROCESS with someone else's finished PRODUCT. They had a process too, but you don't see it on social media. 😉 

SO many people have told me "ohh, I could never bake anything like that" or "I EPIC FAIL so many times trying to bake anything."

So do I, and so does everyone!

And that's the whole point of tutorials and videos - hopefully I can help you avoid my mishaps and disasters! 😉 

Okay, off the soapbox. Recipe time! 

FAQs

"Short on time - do I have to make the cupcakes and frosting from scratch?" 

• Not if you don't want to! You can substitute your favorite white cake mix plus the ingredients the mix calls for; keep the baking pans the same! The cupcakes will just be a little less rich - substituting butter for oil and buttermilk for water will help. 

• Store bought frosting is usually a little thinner than my recipe; add a 1/4 cup of extra powdered sugar at a time until you reach a consistency that pipes and stays in place well.

"Can I make the cupcakes/ frosting ahead of time?"

• Definitely! Wrap the cupcakes well and refrigerate up to 4 days or freeze up to 4 months. Transfer the frosting to a zip-lock bag and squeeze out the extra air, and again - refrigerate up to 4 days or freeze up to 4 months. Thaw in the refrigerator. 

"How do I store these cupcakes?"

• Store in a sealable container; I often put a layer of plastic wrap over the top between the container and lid for a better sea. Cupcakes will keep at room temperature for 1-2 days or in the fridge for 3-5 days as long as they're protected from drying out.

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