Birthday Cupcake

Phil's birthday was last week and I surprised him with a giant cupcake at work.

I bought the Wilton Large Cupcake Pan from Amazon awhile back ago and hid it in storage until his birthday came. He probably wouldn't have figured out what the pan was for anyways, but I really wanted to keep it a surprise.

I just used boxed yellow cake mix and store bought icing. The saw that one box wasn't going to be enough to fill the pan so I made one more box to fill both sides of the pan leaving about one inch for the cake to rise. I used the rest of the batter to fill 4 jumbo muffin cups.

I let the cake bake for 30 minutes then checking on it for doneness after increments of 10 minutes. I think in total, it took the cake to bake fully in about 50 minutes. I made sure to stick a knife in the middle and checked to see if it came out clean.

I let the cake cool for about 20 minutes before turning over the pan onto a wire cooling rack. Both the top and bottom portions of the cake slid right out with no fuss. I buttered and floured the pan, as recommended beforehand.

Admittedly, I am not very good at frosting cakes. I am always too impatient to wait for the cake to cool all the way down to start frosting. Especially in this case because I wanted to bring the cake in to Phil's work. So, the cake was still pretty warm when I put a crumb coat on.

Long story short, I messed around with the frosting quite a bit. First, I made the whole thing white using different piping tips for the ridges on the bottom. I didn't like that so I smoothed the whole thing out. Then, I decided I needed a contrast between the top and bottom. Anyways, what you see above is the final product.

The final touches were M&M's for sprinkles and the candles.

Now, I just have to find other ways to use this giant cupcake pan! Cupcake anyone?