*It's A New Day*

*Inaugural Cupcakes* White cake mix tinted with blue gel food coloring and Red Velvet cake mix, topped with store bought vanilla frosting mixed with red and blue food coloring and red, white and blue sprinkles and candy decorations.

It's official, my boredom has sunk to a new low. No news on a "normal" job, just the occasional substituting job at the local elementary school and no orders for cakes or birthday festivities to keep me busy with everyone lacking in fundage for all things frosted.  So, what's a girl to do? BAKE CUPCAKES!

I can think of no better reason to celebrate with cake than the inauguration of our 44th President (whom personally helped get into office...Hey! I have the "I Voted" sticker to prove it!) So a couple days before The Day, I set out gathering as many red, white and blue decorative food stuffs for what I imagined would be the most patriotic and inspired cupcakes in my baking history. Well, at least in effort and color.

I picked red velvet cake mix because I could skip the endless dropping of red food coloring just to get a deep pink. Ugh! Little did I know that it's just as annoying to turn white cake mix blue.

In the interest of bi-partisanship, I thought, why not make them half-and-half? What fun to bite into the cupcake and see such vivid colors! I figured if I just poured from my wonderful pour bowl set from Williams-Sonoma, this would be a cinch! 

And then the phone rang....

20 minutes later, mom and I stopped chatting because I told her the batter was going to start crawling out of the bowl if I didn't get them sorted into paper lines, like now! This added an element of suspense as I struggled to get the white(blue) cake mix to flow as well as the red velvet, because it was now more like pancake batter and full of air. There was more batter on the tins and on my counters than there was  in the paper liners! At least my kitchen was looking patriotic...

The first batch came out a little more well done than necessary (as evidenced by the dark tops here) 

but I didn't stress, they were going to be gloriously topped with frosting and edible confetti fit for such an occasion!

Well, my heart was in the right place, but my decorative inspiration was more 123 Sesame Street than 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.  If you ask me, the world would be a friendlier place if everyone would just share a handful of M&Ms with someone, so why not let them star atop the cupcakes I created because, thankfully, "It's A New Day"

Best Wishes To You in 2009!