Giant Cupcake!

I finally got a chance to use my new pan! One of my friends has a birthday tomorrow, so we went out to lunch (and shopping) to celebrate. I thought this sounded like a great excuse to bake a giant cupcake, so out came the pan!

I have a few recipes that I've been looking forward to trying out, but everyone else seems certain that red velvet is the way to go. After weaseling out of making little red velvet cupcakes for tomorrow, I felt that I did have to give in to the birthday girl's request today. So... I tried a new recipe. I can usually depend on Southern Living not to lead me astray (because they believe in butter as much as I do), so I went with one of their recipes. Because of the shape of the giant cupcake pan, I had to leave it in the oven for a little over an hour and a half. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, since it was so deep, but I still would be happier if it would cook more quickly! I'm impatient. I also used the Southern Living recipe for cream cheese icing. I was afraid that I would need more than one batch of the icing, but I think it was actually a bit more than I needed, with the shape of the cake. The icing was also a little less sweet, and a little softer than I might normally make, but I was happy with it. I imagine that t could have made it a bit stiffer and sweeter by adding more powdered sugar, but frankly, it sounded like too much work.

Tomorrow, it's regular-sized cupcakes and rice krispy treats!