Baby Shower Baking

One of my closest friends is having a baby and I could not be more excited.  Not only am I thrilled to share the joys and challenges of motherhood with her, I was also stoked to bake delicious treats for her baby shower.  The theme was Cinco de Mayo because it was held on May 5th... but also, what makes a baby shower more festive than slushy momgaritas?  So I figured, what better treat than margarita cupcakes?!  I did some searching and found a recipe that seemed simple... which I really needed since I was making not only margarita cupcakes, but also mexican chocolate cupcakes and cheesecake truffle pops.  Yup, I go all out.  For her, I'd do anything.

So let's start with the margarita cupcakes, I used a recipe from my tried and true iambaker site.  I used vanilla cake instead of lemon and I omitted the tequila, though I'm sure this would have made them really taste 'margarita'esque... I figured I didn't want to push any buttons at a baby shower.

You need:

1 box lemon cake (I used vanilla and added 1/4 lemon juice and the zest of one lemon)
4 eggs
1/2 cup oil
1/2 water
(She suggests using these wet ingredients and not the directions on the box, which I did and they were great!)

What you need to do:

Mix all of the ingredients together in a mixer.  Fill cupcakes liners 3/4 way full and bake for about 18 minutes at 350 degrees.

I wanted these cupcakes to stay fresh and delicious, and because I made these the day before the shower, I made a quick key lime simple syrup to brush on the tops of each cupcake.  I then frosted them with a lime buttercream.  Yum!

To make the lime buttercream, make your basic buttercream (1 cup butter, 5-6 cups icing sugar, 3-6 tbsp milk) but cut back on the milk and add lime juice and lime zest.  Also, a tablespoon of tequila would go a long way to making these true margarita cupcakes.

Photo courtesy of iambaker

I also made chocolate cupcakes with a blackberry compote and lilac buttercream.  And cheesecake truffle 'pops'.  I didn't quite expect the cheesecake pops to be such a hit, but they ended up being deeeelicious!  The best part was: they are dead simple to make.  But those are for the next post ;)