Baby Reveal Cupcakes

   I love cupcakes.  I love to eat them, decorate them, look at them, bake them, read books about them, buy them, and share them with others.  Not just any ol' cupcakes though, good-tastin AND good-lookin cupcakes.  Here are a couple examples of the cupcakes I am talking about: 

 

Most of the ideas for these cupcakes came from the books Whats Up Cupcake? and What's New Cupcake?, but some of them, I'm proud to say, are originals.  

Speaking of originals, one of my couple friends from church decided to have a baby reveal party to find out the sex of their baby.  I was so honored when they asked me to be the one to make the cupcakes!  However, it was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be, not making the cupcakes, but keeping the secret! haha.  The only people that knew the sex of their precious baby were the Doctor and I- for almost a week!!  Goodness that's a hard secret to keep; it sure was worth the wait, though!  Here's how they turned out:

They were having a girl, so of course the inside needed to be pink.  I saw a bunch of ideas online that had colored icing in the middle of the cupcakes, but I really didn't want to do that, because if there was icing on the top and icing in the middle that would make a very sicky-sweet cupcake.  So I decided to make the inside a colored cake instead of colored icing, which turned out perfect, and almost everyone thanked me after they took a bite.

Here's how I made them:  I baked a batch of chocolate cupcakes and a batch of yellow cupcakes normally following the directions on the box.  Then I baked a strawberry cake according to the box. (If you want it to be blue for a boy then you can use white cake and dye it bright blue.) After they were all baked and cooled, I plunged out the middle of all of the cupcakes with a handy cupcake plunger (shout out to my man for giving me this idea) and then just set the insides to the side (or ate them as I went, either way works).  Then I plunged the strawberry cake and stuck them inside the cupcakes.  If you want to be super careful that the colored cake doesn't show through or if you don't want to use icing on the top of the cupcakes then you can put some of the cupcake insides on top of the strawberry cake to pack it in there.  I did this for some of the cupcakes, but realized it wasn't really necessary because I was going to decorate the cupcakes with icing on top which in turn covered up the pink.

Then I iced the yellow cupcakes with chocolate icing and the chocolate cupcakes with vanilla icing.  dashed some blue and pink sprinkles over them and added some blue and pink toppers I made with white chocolate.  I was very please with how they turned out, and even more pleased for my friends that are having a baby girl!!!