Holy Cupcakes Batman

A good friend of mine invited me to her little boy's birthday party and I offered to make his cupcakes/cake as part of my gift. She told me batman themed and blue, yellow and gray were the colors. Of course being that these were cupcakes for a 4 year old boy they had to be fun and bright. My friend said simple as far as cake flavor goes which worked for me since most kids only eat the frosting anyway. I made a white velvet cake and fluffy vanilla buttercream. I had a bat cutter from my Halloween mini cutter set but it wasn't the BATMAN bat shape so I found an image online, made a stencil and cut them out by hand. I have number cutters from Ateco but the 4 didn't have the cutout in the middle so I cut those out by hand also and they looked a lot better that way. I also made the cupcake stand. I wanted to do something besides just put the cupcakes on the table or on plates. With the help of my friend Steph and her cupcake stand tutorial on her blog, and the help of my husband for cutting out the foam boards I got the stand made pretty quickly. Hot glue guns suck though. I had glue everywhere. I am so not a crafty type so this was impressive just for me to accomplish. Ha ha

Okay cupcake time 

This batter was a little thicker than my usual vanilla cupcake recipe but smelled really good. Tasted good too. Always have to have a little lick of the batter!

Love my oven I can bake two pans of cupcakes side by side and they all come out evenly baked

Perfectly poofed on top. I couldn't find grey cupcake liners so I went with the silver/foil. Close enough

Divided my frosting up in equal halves for the yellow and blue frostings. Didn't want to end up with more of one and not enough of the other or have to dye more and try to match it

Golden yellow, Royal blue and a couple of 1M tips

Just a little bit at a time. The color gets darker the longer it sets

Perfect. Batman blue!!

Came out more orangey than I wanted. Should have used lemon yellow. Oh well too late now

Sooooo appetizing right? ha ha

Half dyed yellow, I added blue sugar sprinkles to these

With the fondant batman bats

Closer look so you can see the sugar sprinkles

No I didn't have the lights on bright, the frosting was seriously this bright. I added yellow jimmies to these

With the fondant 4's. I had to make the grey fondant by mixing some black with white fondant

I made the birthday boy his own jumbo cupcake and wanted to do something cool with the frosting, do a two color swirl. I put equal amounts into 12" disposable bags and cut off the tips

Placed inside a 16" disposable pastry bag with an 1M tip, no coupler.

It came out exactly how I wanted. And I had made his name in fondant letters to go on the cupcake

Had to add a fondant 4

And a bat

I think these came out pretty darn cute. The birthday boy LOVED them.

My friend got this awesome candle for the cupcake so I am glad I made a jumbo one just for the birthday boy. Which of course he only licked the frosting off like I predicted!! I was bummed I couldn't find a jumbo silver cupcake liner for this cupcake. This was actually a vanilla bean cupcake I had made with the raspberry vanilla cupcakes I last posted about. The white velvet cupcakes made 24 and I didn't want to make two batches just to get a jumbo one or to have a bunch of leftover cupcakes. Not that that is a bad thing, but I don't need a bunch of extras in the house. Not when I have a giant list of fun flavors to make right  now!!

White Velvet Cupcake Recipe

 from Curious Cupcake Blog

White Velvet Butter Cake - Modified for Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 4 liquid oz of egg whites (around 4 large egg whites)
- 1 cup milk
- 2 1/4 teaspoons vanilla
- 3 cups sifted cake flour (important! make sure you use cake flour and not all-purpose flour)
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 12 tablespoons (1.5 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

Directions
Preheat oven to 350F and fill two 12-hole cupcake trays with cupcake wrappers. In a medium bowl, combine egg whites, vanilla and 1/4 cup milk.

In a large mixing bowl, combine cake flour, sugar, baking powder and salt and mix together to blend. Add the butter and remaining 3/4 cup milk. Mix on low speed until dry ingredients are moistened. Increase to medium speed (high if using a hand mixer) for 1.5 minutes. Then add the egg, vanilla and milk mixture in three equal parts, beating for 20 seconds between additions.

Pour the batter into prepared cupcake trays. Try to fill each cake with an equal amount of batter. Try using an ice cream scoop to help make scoops of batter even. Each cupcake wrapper will be about 2/3-3/4 full. Place trays in the oven for 15-20 minutes, remove when golden yellow and a toothpick stuck in the center comes out clean. Let cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then place on a cooling rack. Let cool completely before frosting.

Fluffy Vanilla Frosting

Ingredients

4 sticks of unsalted butter room temp

5 cups of powdered sugar sifted

1 tbsp vanilla extract

3 tbsp meringue powder ( optional I use it to help the frosting hold the piped shape better)

2-4 tbsp heavy cream

dash salt

Directions

Whip the butter til light and fluffy stopping to scrape down the sides every now and then. Mix the meringue powder and salt in with the powdered sugar. Add in the sugar half cups at a time, beating on high for 30 seconds or so after each cup is added, scrape down the sides and repeat til all the sugar is used it. Add in the vanilla and beat well. Scrap again. Add the cream one tbsp at a time until you reach consistency to your liking.