The Cupcake Queen and her Sprinkle Princess

This weekend we celebrated my Granddaughter Addie's 2nd birthday. She won't actually be 2 until the 29th, but Addie has so many people that love her and wouldn't miss her birthday for the world that her smart Mommy decided to divide it into two parties. And OUR side of the family was this past weekend.
In my family , I am THE CUPCAKE QUEEN ( in other families , I might not be as impressive , but in mine , I am the BEST ). So when Addie was asked what she wanted for her birthday party and she said " CUPCAKES AND BALLOONS ! " It was up to me to deliver on the cupcake part.
Now I have to back track a little to last years party. It was a "ladybug" theme ( Addie's Mommy was very into themes back then ). And I have to say the theme went a little over the top, plus we had both sides of the family together ( TOO many people) . I made close to 100 ladybug cupcakes ! Her Mommy made her ladybug cake ( I think , I don't remember clearly , visions of ladybug cupcakes dancing in my head)

Isn't she ADORABLE ?
Anyway, when I found out this year that she just wanted , " CUPCAKES AND BALLOONS" ( she actually yelled that every time you mentioned her birthday) , I was a pretty happy Grandma. I decided to take her to a nearby store that sells bulk food and has an awesome selection of sprinkles and let her pick out the sprinkles for her CUPCAKES. The first ones she picked out were Breast Cancer sprinkles ( white sprinkles with little pink ribbon sprinkles) , OK , we can get those. Then she picked out red, white and blue stars . Hmmm... well , how about some multi colored flower sprinkles instead ....YEP....phew....
On Friday it was time to bake our cupcakes. Addie was a big helper.

She put the cupcake liners in the pans.

Of course, she licked the whisk ! She gets her sweet tooth from her Papa.



Now we don't just make REGULAR cupcakes in our family . No... we have FILLED cupcakes. And what they are filled with depends on the occasion. For Addie's 2nd birthday , it was white cupcakes with cheesecake filling and chocolate cupcakes with fudge filling . Sounds impressive huh ? ( well, I am the Cupcake Queen , duh ! ) It's not really. It's just cupcakes from a mix ( I'm a Queen , not a Saint ) and the filling is either pudding, or pie filling or pastry filling ,depending on what flavor is needed. Now I'm going to let you in on my secret.

The cake decorator from Pampered Chef. I LOVE THIS GADGET ! I would not be the cupcake Queen without it ( I have actually gone through 2 of these, really ! ), just fill the container , stick it in the center of the cupcake and pull the trigger. WALLAH ! Filled cupcakes ! It also comes with many different attachments  for frosting. I tend to use the "star" tip the most.

On Saturday Addie's Daddy brought her back to decorate all the cupcakes. I also made her her own little cake . Of course when I took the cover off to show her her cake , she stuck her finger in the icing !

She put some of both the sprinkles she picked out on her cake plus some black and white cow sprinkles leftover from her Daddy's birthday ( my son , the dairy farmer).

Her masterpiece !

Funny ... I didn't get any pictures of her cupcakes! Oh well... I started out volunteering to make the cupcakes for her party and ended up making a priceless memory with my Granddaughter ! It doesn't get much better than that !