Hey, Al!

Okay, so who comes to mind as soon as you see leopard print cupcake cases?  Tarzan?  Ivana Trump?  Maybe for you, but for me, it's Peggy Bundy.

 I remember watching Married With Children with my Dad when I was a kid (I didn't get any of the jokes, I just laughed because of the studio audience)  and ever since then two thinks have been constant.  One, always trust that Dad has cool taste.  Two, my admiration for Peggy Bundy's dress sense.  

So anyway, it's not really enough to merely make plain boring cupcakes in leopard print cases and call them Peggy Bundy cupcakes, is it?  No, it is not.  So that got me thinking.... I'd recently tried out a white cake cupcake recipe that I got from Epicurious.  (For New Zealanders, white cake seems to be the American version of butter cake, but not as hard-0ut buttery as we would know it... Any Americans or other knowledgable parties got a better description?  Anyway, all you need to know is that it's awesome and well simple to make).  This recipe calls for 1 1/4 cups milk to go into the batter, but instead of all milk, this time, it was 1 cup of milk, and the 1/4 cup was half Kahlua and half made up instant coffee.  You could use proper coffee, but I'd rather drink that myself.  So that was the flavour of the cupcake... I thought Peggy would appreciate the declasse nature of the Kahlua, and since coffee seems to be the only thing that she can cook, it was appropriate!

Now, for the interesting part... the decorating.  I'd been talking to someone (I forget who... yet more proof that I do way too much talking) about making your own coloured sugar at home, which is deathly simple.  All you need to do is to get some heavy grained sugar - plain white is fine, but demerrara is what I used, and coffee crystals would be even better - and combine it with a wee bit of food colouring.  

I also added some crystal decorating powder, just to make it a bit more sparkly.  Then you just mix it all about.  You really don't need very much, believe me.  I only did two teaspoons of sugar, and I still have a crap-load left... still, just wham it in a little plastic bag, and it will keep.

Pink buttercream was the order of the day, but what flavour?  Boring old vanilla is just not right, so I went caramel.  Ooooh yeah.  The amazing thing was that all the flavours were quite subtle, and not too overpowering.  They looked the shiz, too. The only thing that I would change about this cupcake is to maybe next time not put the Kahlua in, or use all Kahlua and no coffee.  I really think that the caramel overpowered the coffee a bit.  Still, they were deliciously low-brow to look at, and that's what makes me pick something up and ram it in my gob.