Cupcakes Galore!

While at LSU, I would make each of my teammates a funfetti cake on their birthday. Everyone looked forward to these cakes, and I liked making/decorating them. Today was our libero's birthday (her nickname is Vule), and Layne and I took on the task of making the cake. We decided to do a twist on the normal birthday cake and make cupcakes instead. However, I do not know if we would have chosen the same path had we know how difficult it was to make cupcakes here! First, we had to find a cupcake pan which was not that hard except that they really don't have cupcakes here so Layne had to explain it to one of the girls on our team. Luckily, her mother had a pan that she used to make a cheese muffin/scone thing. Anyway, it worked perfect for our cupcakes. Next, finding cupcake liners was also difficult. We went to a bookstore because Layne had seen them there in the past, but the owner sent us to this cake decorating/specialty food  store. They had two sets of liners which we quickly scooped up, as well as food coloring and sprinkles. After getting those supplies, we found a recipe online for chocolate cake and icing. This is much more difficult then a funfetti cake let me tell you! We were lucky because Layne's mom had shipped over several ingredients necessary to make the cake in one of her previous packages. For example, they do not have brown sugar, baking powder, or vanilla extract here to name a few. 

We our ingredients in hand, we started the baking process. After mixing everything together and starting to put them in the liners, we realized that we were not going to have enough liners. Rather than turn the oven off and both of us go in search for more liners, I decided it was time to venture the streets of Bar alone. I knew a few bookstores to try out and hoped for the best. Unfortunately, the first bookstore only had mini-cupcake liners. On my way to the second bookstore, I ran into about half of my teammates getting the present for our libero. I told them my problem, and they all tried to help. However, we were unable to find any more large liners, so I made the executive decision to get some small liners to use around the letters. When I got back, we baked the rest, let them dry, and then started decorating.

Although making the cupcakes was more difficult than I first imagined, it was totally worth it in the end. The libero loved them, and everyone had multiple cupcakes. See for yourself! 

Check out the mess in the background! :)