The Cupcake Challenge

After seeing so many nice foodie blogs, I decided to go ahead and try out my first recipe:
adapting the Rose Cake Tutorial to cupcakes.

Knowing myself as I do, I decided to make the actual baking part uber simple... otherwise I get fed up with the project before the actual work begins. I went with a Betty Crocker cake mix.

To make it even more fun, I found these really cute muffin liners at Target and prepared them for batter.

And here is my lovely stand mixer doing most of the work for me.

Baking the cups...

And after figuring out which tip was the appropriate one for making the roses, here is what I ended up with!

& I was able to use the new cake stand I got off of craigslist! If you are looking for a way to make cupcakes pretty without having to be overly creative, this is perfect.