You are my sunshine...

A few months ago, Bonnie sent me an email with a special request for these cupcakes for her birthday:

Aren't they cheery and sunshiney?  I was happy to oblige her request and got to work on these today since our birthday celebration for her and Sharon is tomorrow :)

Here's what you'll need:

• White cake mix and all the fixins - I've found the box mix works better for tie-dye or rainbow cupcakes; the from-scratch batter is way too thick for even layering
• Yellow and red food coloring
• Your favorite buttercream frosting ingredients
• Candy corn - You'd think they'd be hard to find in the summer, right?  I found some at For the Love of Chocolate in Carytown
• Mini chocolate morsels for the eyes
• White icing for the smile
• The 'I Miss Ukrop's' dish towel is optional :)

BTW - this new beater blade with the silicone along the outside edge is AWESOME!  No more scraping down the sides of the bowl after you add every.single.ingredient.

I blended the cake mix and separated it into 2 bowls.  Then I colored 1 bowl yellow and the other orange...pretty straightforward.

Then I scooped the batter, one color at a time, into the cupcake tins.  I did orange on the bottom, but it doesn't matter.  Bake them according to the directions on the box :)

While they were cooling, I whipped up some vanilla buttercream icing and added some yellow food coloring to it, too.  I don't think I added enough since my suns are little more baby yellow than sunshine yellow, but those are the breaks.

Can't tell you how good it feels to have a real camera again! :)  Look at that focus.

I'm only including this photo to illustrate why I pipe icing onto cupcakes - I clearly lack the skill it takes to ice them the traditional way:

It's ok, you can laugh.  It's not hard; I don't know why it looks so sloppy when I do it.  The point is that it tastes good, right?

Time to start assembling - first the candy corns.  I put 9 around the edge of some, 8 around others.

Then add 2 mini chocolate morsels for the sun's eyes:

For the sun's smile, I picked up a tube of white decorating icing at the grocery store.  This brand of icing comes with a set of tips, and you just screw them onto the top of the tube when you're ready to decorate!  Pretty cool - then you just take off the tip and put the lid back on the tube when you're done.  No wasted icing or messy pastry bags to clean up!  Score!

Done!  Aren't they cute?