Frugal Food Thursday: Spring Cupcakes

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Nothing says spring like these brightly-colored flowered cupcakes!

My daughters and I made these for my youngest daughter's birthday party.  She insisted on cupcakes this year, rather than a cake.  Instead of a mix, I decided to make the cupcakes and icing from scratch.  True, you can often get cake mix free by combining sales and coupons, but the mix's ingredient list is a mile long.  These cupcakes only have 7 ingredients, and the icing only has 5.

To get these ingredients cheaply, look for sales, primarily just before Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  This week, flour and sugar are on sale at Walgreens, and eggs are pretty cheap at Target.  And I found the sprinkles for decorating at ALDI - only $2.99 for a huge jar with six different types of sprinkles.

I found these recipes from the Nick Jr. website, but I felt their cupcake recipe made too few and their icing recipe made too much, so I've adjusted the amounts.

BASIC CUPCAKES

2 cups sugar
2 sticks butter, softened
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
3-1/2 tsp baking powder
1 cup milk

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Cream the sugar and butter together.  Beat in the eggs and add the vanilla.  In a separate bowl, mix together the flour and baking powder.  Add that to the wet ingredients a bit at a time, mixing after each addition.  Stir in the milk and mix until smooth.

Line 2 cupcake pans with cupcake liners.  Spray the liners with non-stick spray.  Spoon the batter into the liners, making the cupcakes 2/3 full.  Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.  Allow to cool completely before frosting.

BASIC FROSTING

1-1/2 sticks butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla extract
dash of salt
3 cups confectioner's sugar
3 tbsp milk

Mix the butter with a mixer until light and fluffy.  Add the salt and vanilla.  Add the confectioner's sugar a little at a time and continue to mix with the mixer until all the sugar is incorporated.  Add the milk, one tablespoon at a time, until the frosting is spreadable, but not too thin.

DECORATING:
Split the frosting into two bowls.  Using gel food coloring (available at the craft store - definitely worth the investment!), add a drop of pink to one bowl and a drop of green to the other.  Mix each bowl.  Add more coloring if you wish to have a more vibrant color - but you don't need much.  Spread the pink frosting on 12 of the cupcakes and green onto the other 12.

Sprinkle the pink cupcakes with lavender sugar, and sprinkle the green cupcakes with multicolored sprinkles.

Add a flower cupcake decoration (I found these at the craft store) to each cupcake.

There are lots more cheap recipes posted here at Frugal Follies.  Click here for the list!

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