Neat Stuff: Reynolds Stay Brite Baking Cups

Our church had an event today where we provided lunch for a local homeless shelter.  Being the designated dessert person I offered to make cupcakes.  I stopped by Ralphs to pick up some ingredients and I saw these on the shelves in the baking isle.

I was just looking at the different prints because Reynolds has finally jumped on the popularity of cupcakes and made colorful designs such as this.  But upon closer examination I saw that the inside was foil. 

The wrapper with the colored design is lined with the foil so that the prints on the outside stay nice and bright instead of disappearing with the moisture of the cake.

"Stay-Brite" Foil Lining.  The cool thing is that it bakes faster because of the foil.  The only downside.. each is $2.50 for a pack of 36... which translate to about $0.08 each.  Considering a pack of 500 cupcake liners from Surfas is $10.55 which translates to $0.03 each it's a bit pricey.  But for its fast baking and smart design, I give these cups...

Four and a half Spatulas.

Back to the cupcakes...

For the decorations I used some of Wilton's Candy Melts.

I wanted to make the color a deeper red so I added some water-based food coloring.  This actually is necessary because the chocolate is too loose to pipe by itself.  In order to make it a bit stiffer the little bit of water in the food coloring makes the chocolate stiff.

I used this tip.  I've been looking for this tip for a while.  Some bakers use this tip (but a much larger one) for the icing on their cupcakes and I couldn't figure out what it was.  As it turns out, it was in my tip kit.

This tip is really great because with one swift circle you can create a quick rose.

It took me about 4 hours to make 90 cupcakes, 100+ red chocolate roses, and 3 lbs of cream cheese icing.  Fun stuff.  I think the residents at the shelter enjoyed the meal we provided.