Guest Post by Stephanie at Spray Paint and Spit Up

I am so so so excited to have one of my great friends Stephanie guest post today! I know you all will LOVE her just like i do! Enjoy!!

Hi everyone!!  My name is Stephanie I have a little budding blog over at Spray Paint & Spit Up.  I like to describe myself as a new mommy & old wife with a mean creative streak.  I do all sorts of things, but my main loves are photography, baking, and design.  So how exciting is this?!  I get to guest blog on Kristina's lovely blog!  I can assure you I am probably way more excited than you!  But have no fear, soon you will get so see more of Kristina's lovely projects, but today, we are talkin' cupcakes, so let's dive on in!!

A good friend of mine is currently pregnant with her second child {you can see her impromptu family photo shoot here} and wanted to reveal the gender of her bun in the oven in a fun way to her parents.  So she settled on cupcakes that had *spoiler alert* pink in the middle and, knowing my love for baking, she asked me to help her.  

So after a "test batch" {or two - yumm!} we got the technique just right.  So if you've ever wanted to do a gender revealing cupcake, look no further than this tutorial!!

To start you'll need two of your favorite cupcake recipes.  For the main body of the cupcake, it'd be a good idea to use either a yellow or white cupcake {we used french vanilla}.  Then for the center of the cupcake, we used a strawberry cake mix - yes, you read that right...these are not from scratch, but hey, I've got a 3 month old and she has a 15 month old PLUS one on they way...we were okay with a box! But I will say in my defense, boxes rarely, if ever, enter my house...anywhoooo....

Mix up the yellow batter and your colored batter separately.  You'll line your cupcake pan with paper liners, then scoop a small amount of the yellow mix into the bottom of each cup.  Then, take a small spoon {I actually used a baby spoon} and put a dollop of your colored batter in the center of the cup.  It will look something like this: 

Be careful to only get the colored batter in the center or else the color will show through on the sides of the cupcake and that would kind of ruin the point, yes?  So, once that's done go back to your yellow batter and fill the rest of the cup with it, so that it completely covers the colored batter {like so}:

Pop those babies in the oven and when they come out, they should look a little something like this: 

Now, if you don't use enough batter on top some of the color will show through {like they did on some of mine} so just take care to cover them well, without over-filling the cups, or else you'll get flat cupcakes instead of happy round topped ones!

Okay, on to the fun part!!  We used just a basic cream cheese frosting dyed in pink and blue to ice our cupcakes.  I *LOVE* frosting...I say the more the better!  So I generously frosted the cakes and added pink sprinkles on the blue and blue sprinkles on the pink.  They came out pretty darn cute if you ask me!!! 

Next, I worked on packaging.  She was sending four each to her parents and her husband's parents, so I stopped by Michael's and picked up cupcake boxes from Wilton.  They worked out really well to keep our cute little cupcakes safe from jostling...don't ask me how they will stay in place if the post office decides to turn the box upside-down, but I don't want to think about that. 

We made cute little distressed tags that say "Eat Me" and I wrapped the boxes in cheesecloth.  I think they turned out so great!

What's that you say??  You want to see the inside of the cake??  Okay, well, I suppose I could take one for the team and take a bite so you can see the inside.

IT'S A GIRL!!!!  

Maybe one more bite for a little better view...

Ummm...I seem to have misplaced the cupcake...

So that's my version of the "What's It Gunna Be??" Cupcake!  I hope you've enjoyed my little guest spot and maybe one day you'll find yourself over at Spray Paint & Spit Up! Thanks for reading and happy baking!!

PS - For any of those concerned about my missing cupcake, I later found it on my hips, thighs, and butt...