Cake Madness - Day 10

Cake of the Day: Basketball Cupcakes

I have to give a huge shout out to my husband for helping me with these cute little cupcakes. These were for a basketball tournament at my church's grade school. I needed an "outlet" for one of my weekend cakes, and when we were handed a flyer after church promoting the tournament, it included a section titled "Bakers Wanted" . . .I found my calling :) Since the tournament ran Friday evening through Sunday afternoon, I wanted to get these to the concession stand as soon as possible (I also didn't want them to have to compete with the yummy breakfast foods they were serving Saturday morning). That being said, I had to make them after work on Friday and deliver them the same night, so I was a little rushed, hence why my husband's help was needed.

I found the idea for these cupcakes from this picture: Basketball Cupcakes. I used a chocolate cake mix and this frosting recipe: Buttercream Icing. Usually allrecipes.com doesn't fail me, but I was quite disappointed with this recipe. It took a TON of powdered sugar and was a mix of shortening and butter. There were some buttercream recipes on there that didn't even include any butter, but I didn't think it could be buttercream without the butter, so I went for a half and half recipe. Perhaps if I had used butter flavored shortening it would have tasted better, but it was overpoweringly sweet, slightly grainy, and left a strange aftertaste in my mouth. Maybe I'm just being picky since most of my other cakes have turned out so well, but I wasn't a fan of the frosting . . .it wasn't bad, but it wasn't that good either. 

For the little basketballs, I couldn't find the orange wafer things used in the source picture, but I did find some mini Nilla wafers that I think worked just as well. My friend (the ganache queen) let me borrow her piping bag to make the pretty frosting swirls. I had my husband pipe the chocolate frosting (with a little black food coloring in it) into basketball designs on the cookies while I made the cupcakes. After they were cool, he also did the piping of the buttercream and I added the decorations because his fingers are too big to pick up the wafers and put them on the cupcakes without smearing the design. It worked out well, and I delivered them as soon as they were done. There were lots of people at the basketball tournament and I got quite a few "oohs" and "aahs" as I carried them to the concession stand. All in all, I think they were a success, but definitely not my favorite thing I've made so far. I guess they made the grade though, because one sold before I even had them all out on the table :)