Cake Fridays

My mom hosted a bunco party at her house last night.  All of her girlfriends from the neighborhood were in attendance.  She was kind enough to ask me to bake some goodies for the party.  I made maple pumpkin granola and Sue's chocolate cake in a cupcake tin.  The cupcakes were topped off with hot pink French vanilla frosting and adorned with mini dice.  They turned out rather cute, if I do say so myself.  My mom did a great job decorating them right before the festivities!

I got the idea from Pinterest, shocking surprise!  The dice are sugar cubes dotted with black decorating icing.  Be sure to let them dry overnight and spread the dice out on a cookie sheet or else they will stick to each other.

For the frosting, I consulted this blog site.  I whipped one package French vanilla pudding mix with 1 C milk until thick.  Then I folded in a tub of extra creamy Cool Whip and about 30 drops of red food coloring to achieve the hot pink color.  It made a lot of frosting so I decorated the 12 cupcakes my mom requested and made 12 graham cracker frozen treats with the rest (an idea I got from the above blog site).  I laid out 24 graham crackers.  I took a large ice cream scooper filled with the frosting and dolloped it on every other graham cracker, making 12 sandwiches.  I put them into a gallon size plastic bag and placed them in the freezer.

I love this frosting because it contains no butter, cream cheese, vanilla extract or powdered sugar!  It reminds me of a marshmallow cream and turned out so light, silky and smooth.  If you're looking for a thicker, denser, richer frosting, stick with traditional buttercream.  But this one was perfect for us :)