Carrot Cupcakes for________?

Today was one of my best friend’s birthdays.

So cupcakes were in order.

I used my mom’s famous carrot cake with cream cheese frosting recipe:

And we decorated them with festive toppers.

Since there were only 6 of us enjoying the treats, I halved the recipe and for cupcakes, baked them for about 25-30 minutes.

These darling cupcake holders were sent to me by a blogging friend and I’ve been waiting for the right occasion to use them. Carrot Cupcakes were perfect.

Owen helped me place them in the pan…and waited patiently for the things to cook, cool, and for the “party” to start.

I wasn’t very clean with my pouring.

or the powdered sugar.

No matter how hard I try, it’s always a disaster.

But soon we had yummy cream cheese goodness.

And while the cupcakes cooled I got the frosting in a piping bag.

Typically, I use a Wiltons piping bag with various tips. If you don’t have a piping bag, use a ziplock bag and cut a small hole in the corner. You can simply use it as-is with the hole in the corner and then stuff the frosting inside (it comes out of the bag similar to a circle tip). I decided to place my tip inside the ziplock and see how that would be–which worked fine. BUT, make sure you get all air pockets of there or the pressure will split the bag in spots and frosting will ooze out (I did it). But I like having make-shift options.

When decorating the tops, sometimes I swirl the frosting around and around so it looks nice. Today I went for “messy”.

They look like cream cheese clouds.

Yummy.

Finally, we made toppers.

Very easy here.

I started with circle sticker labels (you can also use masking tape or rectangle file labels). We wrote out the letters to her name, colored in the circles with crayons, sandwiched a front and back sticker over a toothpick, and placed them on top of the cupcakes.

And what do they spell??…..