It's Pan-tastic!

Post-Valentine clearance sales at Walmart just gave me a cake pan orgasm. The cake pans which simply had Valentine packaging were marked down to 75% off! Yes, that's a Wilton heart-shaped cake pan right there which cost only $2.25, but that doesn't mean baking heart-shaped cakes should only be for Valentine's Day!

I also got a muffin pan (also Wilton) which has its own pan cover (not seen in photo, it's underneath), a giant "Cute Cupcake" cake pan by Nordic Ware (lower left) which lets you put the baked products on top of each other for a supersized cupcake, and the swirl-topped cupcake mold (lower right, also by Nordic Ware) with hollow bottom so you can add your own filling inside! These three bigger pans only cost $4.50 each, original price was $18! I got all four pans for less than that amount!

Some of the cardboard labels even have cake recipes at the back, which I promptly cut and taped to my handy-dandy recipe notebook (which has a little cut-out of Giada De Laurentiis glued to the inner cover).

I was so ecstatic, I think I wet my pan...try. Haha. Just having a little pun with my pans!

And since it's the third Sunday of the month, which means Filipino Potluck Sunday Mass,  I decided to bake Pillsbury Funfetti cupcakes with heart sprinkles. I used the new muffin pan with the heart-print cupcake liners (in photo above) which I also got on clearance. The heart sprinkles came in a little bottle I bought from Marshall's for $2.99. I had wanted to make the frosting pink or red, but I could not find my food coloring vials!

You're actually looking at two types of candy sprinkles on them. The tiny red dots are the sugar crystal sprinkles which I already mixed with the frosting prior to applying it on the cupcakes.

I also learned a cool trick with using frosting that has been stored in the fridge. It will naturally be stiff straight from the fridge, but I put hot water in a bowl and let the frosting container sit in it. The temperature will soften the frosting, like it was freshly opened!
 
And as always, the best ingredient I put in it was LOVE! The cake mix yielded two dozens of cupcakes, two of which were consumed at home, and the rest were gone by the end of the potluck dinner!

Sorry if the cupcakes distracted you from browsing hgh pills, but I just had to share my latest baking breakthrough. I baked these at past midnight, which means that if this were a movie, it would be "Pillsbury Saga: BAKING Dawn!"

Soon I'll perfect those sexy frosting swirls!