PINK COTTON CANDY CUPCAKES

I'm dying of cuteness over here! Pink, happy, fluffy, sweet cotton candy cupcakes are one of my new favorites! Our shop cupcake baker Lori made these recently for one of her customers and I knew we just had to recreate them. These babies deserve to be photographed!

We flavored our frosting with just a few drops of cotton candy flavoring oil. I love all our flavoring oils and the trick to using them is to not use too much. I error on the side of "just a hint of flavor" rather than too much. Too much is just not good, I've done it.

The puffs of cotton candy were easy to make and I'm loving them on top of the paper sticks. Super sweet and fun!

• 24 yellow cupcakes
• white baking cups
• 2/3 cup shortening
• 2 LBS powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup cold milk
• 4 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
• 4-6 drops cotton candy flavoring oil
• deep pink gel paste food coloring
• 18" decorating bag
• round cupcake decorating tip
• 4-1/2" paper lollipop sticks
• cotton candy

Bake 24 of your favorite yellow cupcakes in white baking cups. While your cupcakes cool make your frosting. This recipe makes a really sturdy frosting that piles high nicely and stays put unless the air temperature is really warm. In that case set your cupcakes in the refrigerator to set up after frosting. To make your frosting cream shortening in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add powdered sugar and cream until blended well and fluffy. Add milk, vanilla, salt, cream of tartar, flavoring oil, and food coloring and mix well. Keep your frosting covered to prevent drying.

Place your decorating tip into your decorating bag and make sure its snuggly fit. You may need to trim the end of your decorating bag to accommodate such a large tip. I did this and now its my designated cupcake frosting bag. Place your decorating bag into a large mouth glass and roll the edge of the bag down a bit. Fill your decorating bag with frosting and twist the end of your bag to secure. Now your ready to frost!

Pipe high swirls of frosting starting on the outside edge of your cupcake and working your way around, making smaller swirls as you go. We did 2 swirls of frosting around the cupcake then squeezed just a bit in the middle and quickly pulled up, making a small dollop of frosting to finish them off. 

Once you're finished frosting make your cotton candy toppers by pulling off a ping pong ball size piece of cotton candy, carefully balling it up just a touch and then inserting a lollipop stick. This took me a couple tries before I was satisfied with a "cotton candy balling technique". I was aiming to keep the cotton candy fluffy and not too smooched up.

Place your cotton candy toppers on your cupcakes and giggle a little bit. They made us giggle! Keep in mind that cotton candy starts looking pretty sad after sitting out for a while. I would suggest making these cotton candy toppers on the day that you will be serving them.

Cupcake fans will LOVE them! I promise! Enjoy!

♥ greta