Cupcakes as Gifts

I promised the three girls in my Awana class at church that one way or another, we would have us a cupcake party. Then I welcomed a terrible little bundle of joy into this world via c-section and disappeared from Awana, never to be seen again. Until tonight. Tonight is the awards ceremony. And I am supposed to give out the awards for my girls. This frightens me beyond ... well, there is not much that is worse in my book than speaking in front of people and having to remember names at the same time. When I am put on the spot, names flee from my brain faster than a speeding bullet. Anyway, I am going to make my speech short and quick and say that I did, in fact, come through (at the last minute - my usual style) and bring them cupcakes. And then I am going to hand the mic to the sweet girl who took over my class and thank her and tell the lovely people that she deserves to give out the awards, since she worked with them most of the year. Smart, huh? Or lazy? Or wimpy? I'm not going to think about it.

Anyway, I just finished the cupcakes. And they turned out pretty sweet. Here is how I did it.

First I made Deep Dark Chocolate Cupcakes and One-Bowl Butter-cream Frosting from the Devil -- I mean, Hershey's.

I am always trying to frost them fancy like the cupcake botiques. This is my current atempt. Ger a nice round blob of frosting on your knife. Plop it in the center of the cupcake and dab it, moving your knife straight up and straight down until the frosting spreads out to where you want it.

When you are done, and you lift your knife, it will leave a small peak. Smooth that out and you get this...

At first I liked the perfectly smooth ones like that, but then I got some like this that I liked even better...

For packaging, I wanted those nice cupcake boxes you get at Starbucks (not that I ever buy a cupcake there ;) but I could not find them yet. So I found some short, squatty, wide gift bags on clearance at target for $ 0.75...

Now, to get the cupcakes to stay put in there, I did this weird method. Take a couple feet of foil, cut it the long way and loosely roll it into a tube. Then wind it around your hand (size it so a cupcake can fit down inside it). You might have to shape it some. Then place it in the bottom of the bag. I told you this was weird...

Then, to keep it from getting all over the bag, I cut squares of wax paper as wide as the roll, then shaped them in my hand to slide down into the bags. Then I used tongs to safely lower the cupcakes down into the bags...

And here they are...

My only regret is that they look a little puny in the bags - I should have gone real fancy and made them muffin-sized cupcakes! But they're still cute.

Think the girls will forgive me for abandoning them?