Carribean Cupcakes & Strawberry Lemonade

Last weekend, our Sunday School Class had a party at our pool and park. Parties give me an exuse to bake and create, so I LOVE parties. For this particular event, I was still relishing in our Carribean escape, so I made Luau Cupcakes and Strawberry Lemonade. I saw the cupcakes online from a blog that I follow: http://intentionallykatie.blogspot.com/

So, I visited my local Party City and picked up some little umbrellas in preparation. After I spent $5 on a box of umbrellas at Party City, I saw them at the Dollar Tree for you guessed it-$1. Oh, well, we now have 150 extra umbrella for future baking projects. Jaythan and I had so much fun decorating these, and Jaythan had even more fun eating them (minus the peppermint ball b/c I think that hard candy isn't a wise idea for a three year old).

I also made some absolutely YUMMY homemade strawberry lemonade. I used some of the strawberries that I previously frozen. If you are interested in learning how to freeze berries, just check out my previous post here: http://butterflykissesntastydishes.blogspot.com/2010/04/freezing-berries-tutorial-spectacular.html

BEACH/LUAU Cupcakes

Ingredients:
- 24 baked, cooled cupcakes (any flavor cake mix, I used yellow)
- white frosting
- blue tinted frosting (2-3 drops of food coloring should be plenty) - "ocean"
- 4 whole graham crackers - "sand"
- 24 mini umbrellas

- 24 striped candies - "beach balls"

Directions:
1. Place the graham crackers in a zipper sandwich bag. Using a rolling pin, roll the crackers into crumbs. Pour the crumbs into a shallow bowl.

2. Frost 1/2 of one cupcake with white frosting and dip into the graham cracker crumbs.

3. Frost the other 1/2 with blue frosting.

4. Unwrap a candy, dip it in white frosting and adhere to the crumb side of the cupcake.

5. Stick an umbrella into the crumb side, near the "beach ball." ENJOY :-)!

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Fresh Strawberry Lemonade

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
6 cups of water
10 ounces frozen strawberries, pureed (fresh would do perfectly well)
sugar to taste (I used 1 cup because Southerners like things sweet :-))
Reserve five strawberries to add at the end.

Directions:
Combine lemon juice, water, and 3/4 of the strawberry puree. Add sugar until you have reached the desired tartness/sweetness. Add strawberry puree until the strawberry/lemon taste balance is about equal.
I sliced the five strawberries left over in two, and added them at the end to make it extra pretty before serving :-).