Cupcakes and Kiddos

I've been promising a friend's kids that they could come over and decorate cupcakes with me so I finally decided today was the day. One wanted pink and the other wanted purple. I supposed I could have made this easy and bought a box, dying one half of the batter pink and one half purple but since when do I ever make baking that easy (or cheat like that)? So, instead, I decided to make an attempt at Koolaid cupcakes with regular purple buttercream frosting. I figured if you can add those silly flavor packets to your cupcake frosting that Duncan Hines sells, then you can totally use Koolaid packets to flavor your cupcakes. I was so right! I'm not sharing this recipe. My husband is always getting on me about giving away my recipe originals when I know I want to write a cookbook or open a bakery one day. I will say, though, that you can add Koolaid to your regular cupcake batter and end up with a yummy cupcake.

Adding the Koolaid resulted in a brightly colored, light and airy batter.

Yep, totally making these for K's first birthday

Aren't they pretty?!?! Perfect purple buttercream came from
39 drops of blue and 70 drops of red good ole fashioned
McCormick brand food coloring.

I'm in love with these cupcakes. There is a (very) slightly tart [strawberry] bite from the Koolaid but it cuts the overly sweet buttercream perfectly. I couldn't be happier with the cupcakes and won't be altering the recipe at all. The only problem I see is that the cupcakes are so, so light that it will be far too easy to eat too many.