Cupcake #2 was made this past weekend for our family’s 4th of July feast. If you didn’t get to read the post about the feast make sure to check it out here.  The cupcake recipe was based on a recipe I was given over 5 years ago by a college friend that had gotten placed in the back of my recipe file. Definitely my loss.

The recipe is Billy Reech’s Vanilla Vanilla Cupcakes which are sold at his bakery in New York City. I look forward to visiting his bakery one day and finding out if I did his recipe justice. Billy shared his famous recipe with Martha Stewart years ago on national television and the link to his recipe can be found here.

Why is the cupcake red? Is that a new flavor of vanilla? Nope- here I go getting sassy again and trying to throw a curve ball at you. I know that rainbow cakes are all the craze right now, so I decided to make 3 layers of red, white, and blue.

The layers didn’t turn out exactly how I envisioned, but with my heavy baking experience of 2 weeks, I didn’t get too bent out of shape. I just divided the batter into three layers and used plain food coloring to color the blue and red portions.  When I repeat the recipe, I will use food coloring specifically for cake decorating from ABC Cake Decorating. I think the red food coloring slightly affected the taste of the red layer and rumor has it there is a “no taste red” dye.

The garland was from Shop Sweet Lulu’s and was approximately 3 inches of their garland wrapped around a lollipop stick and attached with double sided tape. Simple. Festive. Nice touch.

Overall, I would make them again. They weren’t too sweet which was perfect since the frosting was very sweet which made for a good combination for me. In addition, two of my childhood favorites were served which made for a very sweet 4th of July- pop rocks and red and blue Hawaiian punch.

I was tickled to watch Samantha experience the sensation of pop rocks. The perfect trifecta- vanilla cupcakes, pop rocks, and Hawaiian punch. Yummy.

I am very excited about this journey to discover 52 new cupcake recipes. My family of taste testers has enjoyed this “challenge” and is excited to see what is next. I am once again just loving having them be a part of this journey with me as I seek to live and learn as I mark items off my list. Life is good.