Star Fleet Cupcakes.

Two weeks ago, Hubs came home and told me he offered up my sub-par baking abilities to his coworkers in order for them to throw a small work-day surprise birthday party for one of their own. I was both mortified and honored.

Mortified because, uh, hello, I hardly ever bake anything ever, and now you want me to bake the only dessert that's going to be at this party? And you want the batter dyed to be rainbow? And you want the icing dyed to match the Star Trek shirt colors? And you want little Enterprise swooshes? That's a lot.

But honored because he believed that I could do it, and that I wouldn't embarrass him.

Before I ever started to bake, I printed off a template of the Enterprise swoosh for me to make the chocolate toppers. Then I melted some white chocolate and piped out about 30.

Some wax paper on top so the chocolate doesn't taste like paper/stick to the paper.

The cupcake baking truly was a daunting process, but I made it as simple as possible by using a box mix and store-bought icing. After mixing the batter, I separated into six bowls (I was going for red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple).

I used some food dye from my Wilton's cake decorating box that Sarah got me in 2011, and created these six colors:

Yes, I know there is no purple.

Apparently chatting on the phone with your mom while mixing colors can lead to a person forgetting what colors to mix to make purple. (Hint: it's not blue and green.) (Extra hint: it's red and blue.) But hey, whatever, I like the teal-ish color. It definitely could have ended up worse, right?!

Then I used a spoon (one for each batter color) to scoop a small dollop of each color into the cupcake liners. 

Ended up looking like this:

Kind of cool looking, right?

Right.

Then I baked, and from the top, they looked like little globes since the blues and greens were on top. While baking I separated out two tubs of white icing, and used the food dye to attempt achieving the Star Trek shirt colors.

Not perfect, but close.

Then I used more of the tools that came in my super cool cake-decorating box from Sarah and decided to pipe the icing out onto the cupcakes. 8 or 9 cupcakes per color. Some turned out really pretty and other not so much. Here are the best of each of the three icing colors:

Star Fleet, anyone?

The finished, rainbowed, dyed-icing, swoosh (already eaten) cupcake.

Success!

I was exhausted after making these. I spent the greater portion of the evening in the kitchen, unable to watch Game 7 of the Heat/Pacers series. I went to bed before Hubs was even home to see the cupcakes.

Then I woke up to find these and this wonderful note:

And it was all worth it.

Hubs said his coworkers really enjoyed the cupcakes, and of course, I was glad to hear it!