The sun will come out...

So last night I had time to do some baking, nothing from scratch, just box, but I wanted to try something. So in honor of the Goverment Shutdown that didn't occur I present: Government Shutdown Cake.

Tim helped. I've been seing some really fabulous cakes online and I wanted to do some experimentation. I saw one similar to this on Not Martha but I did white frosting. Martha had one on her show too, but I don't have a lot of layer pans, and thought this looked like more fun. Maybe? I think next time I'm going to toast some coconut and throw that on top of white frosting, that way you'd have nooo idea that there was a rainbow lurking inside. I did add coconut flavoring, I think lemon flavoring would also be appropriate. Then it would taste like sunshine.

My co-ranger says it tastes like unicorns.

Toasted Almond with carmely maple-y frosting

Flash!

No Flash!

I found that these cupcakes were very light and fluffy. I toasted the almonds a little too long, didn't read the instructions that said to fold them into the batter, and couldn't tell that they were actually in the cake. So I think I wouldn't chop them as fine next time.
I tried the Salted Caramel frosting that the Californian Sister linked to on her blog. Complete and utter fail. I tried three times to get the sugar and cream to mix after carmelizing in the pan. All I got was hard somewhat burnt sugar in a puddle of vanilla and cream. So then I tried the carmel frosting that was from Allrecipes.com that was suggested after I couldn't get the first one to work. The one I ended up getting to work has butter, brown sugar, vanilla, cream, and powdered sugar. I beat the crap out of the frosting while it was still warm when I was adding the powdered sugar so that I wouldn't get that gritty texture I heard about. So far, the three people I heard from really liked them. (btw, who doesn't like cupcakes?) But the frosting was more maple-y I guess.