Start To Finish, Cupcake holder

Ok, this project starts with a cheater. I'm sure Lauren Meader would whip up her own gable box with a clear window just wide enough for 3 cupcakes. And I would love it too. But I'm Erin Kellogg. So when I saw these boxes at The Container Store for less than two dollars each I bought the heck out of them. I wanted my cupcakes to fit and not slide around. I had a tip from my cake decorating class I took a while back. That rubber shelf liner stuff!

I used double sided tape to stick it down into the box. The other good thing about this is it made the bottom of the box more stable.

Then I started to decorate the box. I happen to love white, so I saw no reason at all to cover the whole box with print papers. If it was a card I wouldn't cover the whole thing.

I went with a tropical theme. The cupcakes inside are coconut cupcakes. (Recipe follows) I felt like the tropical flowers made it fun. And the fact that they are those prelayered stickers made it fast and easy to make a great looking box.

I felt they needed one more touch to make them extra special so I added a cute bow. I was going to do tags, but I was handing them right to the recipients. Stephen has two teachers in his class and these were for them. (That cutie pie in the back of my shots is little brother Ethan who helped with all of this, including making the cupcakes)

The teachers loved them. Stephen has really fantastic teachers. I was happy to be able to bring them a little tropical sweetness.

Cupcake recipe:

Two young cupcakes. It was an adventure getting to the meat of them, the boys drank the coconut water, I put the meat in the chopper then just added it to a super moist vanilla cake recipe. I don't actually recomend "super moist" though, the coconut adds a ton of moisture. They are good, just REALLY moist. If you were doing a normal cake it would probably be weird. As a cupcake it worked.

For the frosting I took a basic whipped recipe, 2 cups heavy whipping cream, dash of vanilla and 1/2 cup of confectioners sugar, whipped all that up but I added just a few drops of coconut extract too. The coconut flavor in the cakes is pretty strong, in the frosting it's pretty light.

The whole thing ends up being a moist slightly sticky delight! Very tropical tasting. :) Need to be stored in the fridge or the frosting will melt.