Baseball Cupcakes

With baseball/soccer/football/lacrosse comes snack calendar for all the parents. How easy it is to buy the giant Costco box of rice crispy treats and call it a day. Listen, these are our special years with our kids, let's step it up. They are not going to wax nostalgic in 20 years about how cool it was to open that cellophane wrapper.

Now, I know you're busy, you have other things to do, it's a pain in the neck...I hear you. But these are memories, this is what they will remember when they talk to their friends about their mom, "I remember one time, my mom made me baseball cupcakes for a regular game snack. It wasn't even a special game...that was cool." And you will only have snack once, maybe twice a sport's season.

This stuff isn't hard, just jazz up a regular box mix using the "butter recipe" on the back of the box Duncan Heinz:

1 1/4 cup water (or other liquid if you are flavoring them)
1 stick melted butter (real butter,people!)
3 eggs

Fill up the cups only 1/2 way, you get flatter cupcakes, easier to decorate as baseballs.



Then jazz up your regular container of frosting with some real whipping cream. Pour about 1/4 cup into the frosting and whip it baby! I got this idea from my Saucy girl.

Frost them just as you normally would, but reserve about 1/4 cup of frosting to tint red.


Put the reserved frosting into a ziploc baggie and add lots of red coloring and squeeze to mix. Cut off the corner and pipe the stitches:


Let your munchkin get in on the act. It doesn't have to be perfect...remember, memories:


See? Mom of the year, or at least mom of the season:


Look at how cute they look eating their treat and showing off to the other kids with rice crispy moms.



Now, lest you think I'm some kind of mom mutant know this - my kitchen is a mess and the laundry is piled up on the floor of the family room, but I made my kid proud and happy and made a cool memory.

Oh, and look what happens when the cooler tips over on top of the leftovers on the drive home. See? I'm human.