White cupcakes with white icing

I was asked by a coworker's husband to make some cupcakes for their 25th anniversary. I love projects like this. He said that I could choose the colors and decorate them however I wish. But he did say that she likes white cake with white/vanilla icing. So I once again made my favorite white cake recipe (see the coconut cupcake recipe I listed somewhere below - this time I used vanilla extract instead of coconut). I took a bunch of photos of these cupcakes because they were so sparkly and pretty. I used my new polka dot cupcake liners but had a problem with them. They are pretty heavy in texture with a grease proof lining. The grease proof lining caused many of the cupcakes to pull away from the liner. Thank goodness I made so many extra because a good 6 or 7 of them pretty much lost their liner. I don't know how to prevent that from happening but after researching this problem online - it seems pretty common. It just looks bad to have the liners coming off when you are giving them as a gift. But besides that issue....everything went well. I made a simple American type buttercream with butter, shortening, vanilla, milk & powdered sugar. Before I placed my buttercream into the piping bag, I spread a small amount of pink food coloring inside the piping bag - just a few stipes of it here and there. That is how I achieved the somewhat striped pink look. Then I sprinkled each of the cupcakes with rainbow disco dust and placed a gumpaste white flower on top. I purchased these flowers in bulk from cakedeco.com. I've mentioned them before. You can save a lot of money purchasing items like these in bulk. I do not work with gumpaste so I could never make these myself but I like the results of a gumpaste flower. I usually always use the royal icing flowers but wanted to try something different. Gumpaste would have nothing in it that would make you sick if you ate it but you wouldn't want to eat it. It gets rock hard. But I don't think anyone really eats the little hardened royal icing decorations either....well, kids do, but not adults.

I packaged these cupcakes in my beautiful pink bakery boxes with the cupcake inserts. I'm going to place them on my coworkers desk before she arrives to the office tomorrow morning. Her husband is going to drop off a card early before she arrives. I'm so thrilled to be part of their celebration! (Plus, the $60.00 I'm getting paid for 25 cupcakes is pretty good too!).