Celebrating Our Secretaries!

Today we celebrated our wonderful office staff at my school.  We continued the traditional gifts of movie and restaurant gift cards, we'll man their desks for a couple of hours in the afternoon next week so they can leave early, and we also shared some yummy treats.

My contribution was, of course, something sweet - cupcakes!

I found a new recipe for crunchy buttercream frosting on iambaker that I couldn't wait to try.  I've posted it on the recipe page as well.  (I am a true fan of the crunchy buttercream frosting.  I can live with cream cheese frosting. Won't ever do the whipped cream stuff.  Not sweet enough.  Grocery store cake with buttercream frosting?  I snag the corner piece!!)  Anyway, I made the frosting and after adding enough milk so that it frosted properly, I was happy with it and will use this recipe again. (I won't get into the "mixer incident" where my mixer suddenly had a mind of its own and restarted when I had the beaters out of the bowl and how my NHS Wrestling sweatshirt was covered with buttercream bits, but that's a story for another post...)

Yummy white cake buttercream frosting cupcakes - with flags of course!

Another little tip - I found this great little plastic cupcake batter pourer thingy at Walmart last week.  I remember my mom pouring batter from a bowl into the cupcake tins and that last long driiiiiiiiiip before moving from one cup to another.  I always had a horrible time with pouring from a bowl, even one with a spout.  I tried a small glass.  Not much better.  I read where someone used a 1/4 c. measuring cup - better but not great.  But this little $2.50 kitchen item (pictured below) is GREAT!  Each cupcake ended up with the same amount of batter, there was no dripping and the flat surface on the top allowed me to scrape it with the accompanying knife thingy.  Someone should get a prize for this little invention!

A very cool thing!

I wanted some little flags for the top and did a Google search.  I found a tutorial for these cute little flags at The Yuppie Lifestyle.  I don't have the patience to recreate the tutorial, so check out this link:  Paper Ribbon Flags.  I think they turned out amazing and were fun to make AND they were easy AND they were quick!  I added a little blob of hot glue to attach them to the skewer.

The cupcakes were a success and I was able to sneak one off the plate for myself.  That got me through a Friday afternoon with 1500 high schoolers!  Happy weekend everyone!