The case of the giant cupcake

I was up to my knuckles in icing last night. After seeing this pan in a parenting magazine a while ago, I knew I was meant to own it. I held off until Michael's ran a 50% off coupon, then high tailed it to the store to snag the pan. I got the only one on the shelf at the time. Then I had to wait for a good occasion to whip up a giant cupcake. Several occasions have come...and gone, without me seizing the opportunity, so I thought Rachel's classmates would enjoy a special treat on their next to last day of school. I used boxed cake mix and made the bottom chocolate and the top white. The white part was done cooking a good 5 minutes before the chocolate part, but I'm thinking that there's no easy way to pop one half out and not lose the other half. The difference in cooking time could have been due to the different mixes, or it could have been that I filled one side higher than the other...or who knows.

Decorating proved a challenge. On the Wilton site, the picture they show doesn't have the bottom half iced. Rachel would not approve of this. I was told, "Kids like icing" and that more was better. I started with white stripes and liked that, but was again told that more was better, so we added pink stripes as well. Perhaps, if I'd had a wider tip or if the bottom had been white and brown didn't show through, it would have looked better. Something to keep in mind for next time. For the top half, I'm thinking that again, a wider tip than what I had would have looked nicer. I guess I had to make one to figure out what I'd do differently the next time. Rachel helped with the sprinkles. Kids like sprinkles too, you know. Regardless of how it looked, it was a hit with the kids at school today. One of the teachers used that phrase, which explains why Rachel keeps telling me when things were a hit. Such a great phrase to be coming out of a five year old's mouth!

The cake is sitting on a regular dinner sized Fiesta plate, if that gives you any sense of proportion. Also a tricky thing to transport!