January Cupcakery: Root Beer Float Cupcakes

This month's New Year's Resolution cupcake was ROOT BEER FLOAT cupcakes. I found the recipe here and I followed it as exactly as I could. Not sure why my pictures look so much uglier though. I am thinking that I didn't use enough glaze. Oh well, easy fix.

Also, making this recipe made me realize that I am a VERY messy baker. I'm pretty sure I used every bowl, measuring spoon, and measuring cup in the entire house. Not really sure how that happened, but I'm sure I'll get less A.D.D. from month to month.

As for taste, these cupcakes tasted a little weird to me. That might be because I ate one of the first ones out of the oven and it was a little under cooked. I made 3 batches (or at least I put 3 different pans into the oven) and they significantly improved each time. I am a huge root beer fan so I was hoping they would taste a little more root beer-ish. The only thing I couldn't find was root beer schnapps, so that may have had something to do with it. Brian said they tasted like really yummy bran muffins. Ummm, ok? Don't know about that one...

I started out with these ingredients:

Throw all this in a bowl, mix, bake, and YUM. Ok, maybe a bit more complex than than...

Then I made a massive mess and ended up with this:

I definitely overfilled the cups, but the recipe said I should fill them higher than I thought. Apparently I am already an over-filler so these ended up majorly spewing over the sides. Also, I think I undercooked this batch. Oops. But then again, the recipe called for me to pour a little bit of root beer over each cupcake after they came out of the over, so that probably made them soggy. I ended up eating that ugly one on the bottom left.

After making the glaze and the buttercream (pretty easy, yay!) I added the final touches and came out with these:

Ugly but kind of yummy.

Just like a root beer float, kinda.

Overall I would give this recipe a 7 out of 10. It was decently easy to follow and the end result was yummy. I still wish they tasted more root beer-ish and I wish that I had root beer barrels to put on top (I used those little cola things instead).  I also need to work on my baking skills; that will probably make this whole one-recipe-a-month thing a bit easier.

Chowing down.

Next month I plan on making DARK CHOCOLATE RED WINE cupcakes. How good does that sound?! And now I need to find someone who wants to eat 24 root beer float cupcakes...