Cupcakes & Icing and more..........

A new neighbor and friend of ours, Christina, had surgery last week, so I decided to try to help her out a little bit. She has two little girls - Abigail who is 2 1/2 years old and Avery who just turned one. I figured that Christina and her husband Todd had their hands full, so I decided to try my hand at the whole "kid" thing and have Abigail over to make some festive fall cupcakes.

So - I went to pick Abigail up, but she wasn't totally sure that she was ready to come over. I coaxed her into getting on the golf cart and going for a short ride first. After our golf cart ride we came back to my house and got started on the cupcakes.
Abigail was SO excited! The first step was getting her an apron. I couldn't find any of my kid size aprons, so the next best thing was to let Abigail wear one of my aprons. It was so funny, because the apron went all the way down to her ankles!




Next, we started to mix up the batter. Abigail wanted to do it all - she put in the mix, the eggs (one at a time), the oil, and the water. It was then time to mix. The directions said to use a mixer, so I put Abigail up on the counter and let her hold the mixer with me and we did it together. She thought it was so neat. After the batter was all mixed up, I asked her if she wanted to taste - to my surprise, she declined. BUT - the cupcake mix came with sprinkles that you added to the batter once all the ingredients were mixed together. So - I let her add the sprinkles and stir them in. As soon as the sprinkles were in the batter, she immediately wanted to taste - and not just a little taste - she asked for a spoon full!



After the cupcakes baked and cooled, it was time to decorate (this was the fun part). She told me that she wanted to ice the cupcakes herself, so I gave her a small bowl of icing and a spoon. I walked away to get her a few cupcakes to decorate and I came back and she had icing all over her face. So I quickly learned that she probably didn't need to ice the cupcakes by herself. So - plan B: I would ice the cupcakes and let her decorate them.



So - she had a blast decorating. She had her choice of sprinkles, m&m's, candy corn, and colored sugar.
Bless her heart though - she LOVES sugar! She kept finding every excuse in the book to lick her hand, fingers, and even elbows! She did a great job decorating and seemed to have a good time. She told me that she was making cupcakes for herself, me, her mommy, daddy, and sister.






All in all it was very fun, and the cupcakes tasted great, but it was a nice little reminder, that I'm not quite ready for kids!