4th of July Cupcakes - with Cream Cheese Frosting recipe

We had two 4th of July get together's this year and for both I decided to go the simple route and do cupcakes. The first bath for a party at my Papa's house I did simple Butter Pecan ones and Triple Chocolate ones with a cupcake paper/topper kit from Walmart. Took the easy way out and iced them with cool whip and red, white & blue sprinkles.

For our second get together I decided to do something a little more involved and make some homemade almond cream cheese frosting to go on 3 types of cupcakes - Butter Pecan (was a big hit at the last party) Chocolate Mint and Carrot Cake.





Crusting Almond Cream Cheese Frosting


This will make enough frosting for 6 dozen cupcakes and it is easily halved or even double depending on how much you need.

3 blocks room temperature cream cheese
2 sticks room temperature butter
1 cup vegetable shortening
4 lbs powder sugar
2 tablespoons almond flavoring (can use vanilla if you wish)


First either in a stand mixer or using a hand mixer cream together shortening, butter & cream cheese

Then add the almond flavoring and mix again

then add the powdered sugar 1/2 a bag at a time and mix thoroughly

You can be done or add food coloring as I did, I had some gel colors so divided my frosting into 3rds and left one white while coloring one blue and one red

then it's ready to use. The frosting with "crust" like buttercream and is nice and thick unlike normal cream cheese frosting which is runnier and never really sets.

I had planned on making "firework" cupcakes but my grass tip was no where to be found. I even had my hubby stop by walmart on his way home from work to see if they had one with no luck. So he bought me a nice little cupcake tip set and I used the cupcake star tip #1 to make big swirls then used a start tip #22 to make little "stars" on each cupcake then added red,white & blue colored sugar. Simple but it worked.

I used Reynolds wrap foil cupcake liners and BEWARE those things are HOT lol, I know common sense right lol but dang I burned my fingers a half a dozen times getting those suckers onto cooling racks.

In the cupcake tip kit that my hubby got me it had a cream filling tip that I HAD to try so I filled a couple of the cupcakes with leftover frosting and the cut one in half to see how it looked. Turned out great! My oldest son has now requested filled cupcake cones for his 5th birthday coming up. Should be fun :-)

And just cause he is so darn cute here is a picture of my son with a cake he decorated with left over frosting. (and yes that is cupcake on his face from being my taste tester lol)