A Giant Cupcake for Jessie

 This weekend I went home to New Jersey to help my sister with some wedding preparations and also celebrate her 25th birthday!  As much as we do not need to be eating birthday cake, I've had my eye on this rainbow cake from the Feminist Housewife for a few weeks now.  Time got away from me and I ended up making a giant cupcake instead...from all ready-made ingredients!  Like I've said in the past, I am not a baker so I can't be expected to make my own batter and frosting...yet.

This was so super easy.  Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  Because of the shape of the mold, it needs to bake longer at a lower temperature.  I took a basic cake mix...Pillsbury French Vanilla...so delicious!  Grease and lightly flour the inside of the Wilton Giant Cupcake mold.  Be sure to get in all of those lines and crannies.  Then, I filled both sides of the mold.  The trick is to make sure that they are both filled with about the same amount of batter.  Pop her in the oven for about 60 minutes.

I used a chopstick to test for done-ness.  It's the toothpick trick, only bigger!  Let the cake cool for while...like 25 minutes a while...any sooner and it will stick to the mold.  The cakes will rise and have this beautiful, rounded, golden tops.  Slice 'em off!  I plopped down a layer of the most delicious whipped strawberry frosting onto the cupcake stump and placed the top up on top.  Again, more frosting.  Then I sprinkled some little colorful nonpareils.

This was kind of impromptu, but not too bad for the first time.   Next time I will cool a little longer, cut my tops off more evenly and buy the giant sprinkles that match the giant mold.  By the way, even better than the look of this cake...it tasted a-maz-ing!  I think it was the mix of the french vanilla and the whipped strawberry frosting.  So good!

PS...As I was looking for giant cupcake ideas, I came across this awesome cupcake bakery in Seattle, Bake It in a Cake.  Check out some of her incredible cupcake recipes!  Chocolate pudding pie in a red velvet cupcake???  Yes please.