Last weekend I had the pleasure of baking cupcakes for Mr. Cupcake’s mom’s 60th birthday. It was a perfect October day, full of sunshine, a cool breeze and beautifully coloured trees. There were over 60 guests so we were surrounded by the fun and tradition of close family and friends.

I decided that strawberry and mango cupcakes would be on the menu for dessert. Strawberry is a big fruit favourite and I felt mango was a nice slightly exotic complement. I went with fruit cupcakes as I thought they presented a nice colour scheme and would be familiar to all the generations present at the party.

For the strawberry cupcakes, I used strawberry fruit puree in the vanilla cupcake batter and then enhanced the true strawberry flavour with a strawberry buttercream that had chunks of strawberry rather than just the puree. I then stayed with the strawberry cupcake batter and added a naturally coloured mango buttercream on top.

The strawberry cupcakes were a definite hit whereas the mango ones still left something to be desired. The mango flavour was not as intense as I would have liked it. The cool thing about this whole experience was that the restaurant owner/master chef loved my cupcakes and even gave me loads of contacts where I can purchase supplies in Germany. He even brought out the fruit puree which he uses, providing me with the brand name and where I can get it so that I can achieve a more intense mango flavour in future batches. Did I ever tell you that I love Germans? So awesome. I love it when people share their information. And it inspires me to do the same. There is just something so organic about people exchanging information and something so sad about people desperately holding onto their recipes and knowledge.

So as I find out cute little tricks, I promise to share. Like with the edible paper and with the ribbon rose making. If you feel like a little cupcake challenge, let me share this great link with you for fondant figures. Have fun crafting fondant into little 3D creations for your cuppies!