Last week, my family had the honor of hosting a sheva brachos dinner for some dear friends.  My mother made a delicious Chinese dinner with eggrolls, wontons, stir-fried noodles, and lemon chicken.  (Is your mouth watering yet?)   In addition to being the head taste-tester (for quality assurance purposes only, I assure you), I volunteered to prepare the desserts.

I’m definitely not as good a photographer as Miss Chaya Andruiser, our photography blogger, but I managed to snap a couple of shots with my mobile device before everything was served and promptly eaten up.

 

For the cupcakes, I used the vanilla cake recipe by Mrs. Ann Reardon of howtocookthat.net that’s included with her Mickey Mouse cupcake recipe, replacing the milk and butter with pareve soy milk and Earth Balance respectively.

For the frosting, I used Mrs. Reardon’s American Buttercream recipe, using vanilla soymilk and Earth Balance in place of dairy ingredients.

I want to thank everyone who sent me suggestions and ideas for cupcake frosting designs.  They all inspired me as I experimented with my own designs.  Since I made miniature cupcakes, I had to downsize a bit.  I simply don’t have the hand and finger dexterity to pipe superfancy designs on such small surfaces!  :P

In the end, I went with little flowers covering the entire surface of the cupcake in two colors, purple and pink.  (I would’ve done more colors if I hadn’t run out of food coloring.  You’d be surprised at how much blue and red went into the lavender icing before it went from sidewalk grey to a decent shade of purple!)  My mom and I also made a lemon-flavored white icing, which we piped in rose designs (kudos to Hannahbee for the link to that design), but alas and alack, I didn’t get a picture of that. :(

I really enjoyed preparing these cupcakes, and it seemed to me like everyone enjoyed eating them, too.  (My father told me afterwards that they looked so professional, he thought we’d bought them.)  This was quite a learning experience for me and I’d definitely do it again!