July 3rd Snack Bento + Cupcakes

Someone actually ordered cupcakes from me. I had a few leftover from a potluck last weekend so I ended up bringing them to a party afterwards. One of the guys there said he really liked my cupcakes and asked me to make him a dozen for his Friday morning meeting at work.

He didn't give me any instruction as to what he wanted "Oh, just whatever you're making would be great" so I made them the same as the ones last weekend, just with different decorations.

The cupcakes themselves are the "White Cupcakes" from book Crazy About Cupcakes. I substituted 1 3/4 cups of cake flour for the 1 1/2 cups white flour called for by the recipe and addded 1 1/2 cups of chopped mango. This is the second time I've used this recipe, and it's excellent.

They're filled with a pomegranate cream filling. I used the "Irish Cream Filling" recipe from the same book, and substituted pomegranate molasses (who knew this even existed?) for the Irish cream. I love this filling, it's amazingly creamy and tart.

The frosting is a plain buttercream and the stars are made from fondant. I was really pleased that I was able to match the frosting colours to the fondant so closely. This is the first time I was able to do that. It's actually quite a bit more purple than it looks in the picture.

I was so busy making cupcakes, I didn't really have time to make bento lunches, so it was a quick snack bento this morning.

There are three pork shu mai (I need to make another batch this weekend - almost out!), two little onigiris (buried), fried plantain hearts, asparagus, broccoli and sugar snaps, and the last of the black bean salad. The fruit is just strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and lychees.