Cupcakes!

We are so excited today because the new issue of Newnan-Coweta Magazine is now out and that means it is time to get ready for the holiday season. The adorable child on the cover, Alyssia Brantley, is holding some of the holiday cupcakes, featured in this issue.

Four local women, known for their baking skills sent us a favorite cupcake recipe to share and editor, Angela McRae and I, made the recipes with great success. The people in our office really enjoyed them!

Bob Fraley took some great photos for the magazine and Angela, a talented photographer with a good eye for design, took photos for me, including the photo at the top.

I invite you to pick up a copy of our magazine for the recipes, and I will be sharing some decorating tips for cupcakes here on my blog. The first tips will be for the fall cupcake, pictured above.

I used the recipe by Patty Gironda for Hummingbird Cupcakes and used her recipe for Cream Cheese Frosting. To decorate, I used a 16" pastry bag and a large tip coupler with a large star tip to frost the cupcakes. I iced them in a circular motion from the outside, finishing in the center and building the icing to a peak in the center. I then dusted the  cupcake with chopped pecans and sprinkled on sugar leaf decorations, then added two candy pumpkins on top. It was easy and didn't take but a few minutes to decorate each cupcake.

I used Wilton cake decorating supplies available at Michael's, Hobby Lobby, and WalMart. The large bag, coupler and tips are very important when decorating cupcakes because if you want to give the cupcakes a "bakery" look you will need the big tips. It takes roughly twice the amount of icing when you use large tips but the finished product will have everyone oohing and aahing over the results.

The sugar leaves I found at Kroger in the baking section. This is a great recipe for fall and especially for Thanksgiving and the recipe is included in our November/December issue.

There are a number of other decorated cupcakes in that issue and I will be posting the how-to instructions for each one for the next couple of weeks, beginning with the Thanksgiving cupcakes.

For out-of-towners here is the link for the digital issue. The cupcake recipes begin on page 40.