Frugal Birthday Cupcakes

My kids have been at church camp all week.  Yesterday was Ashley's birthday and today is Evan's birthday.  The youth pastor said that we could bring cupcakes to celebrate.  I could have bought cupcakes at the grocery store, but when I checked the prices for four dozen cupcakes (that is how many I needed) I was floored.  It would have cost me about $40 to get that many already made.  So if you know me I was not going to pay that much so I made my own.

I got out my Bosch mixer and I just mixed two boxes of cake mix and did the recipe on the box except I used milk instead of water and added an extra egg.  I did both mixes at once since the Bosch has such a large capacity.  After that I mixed up homemade icing.  Ashley had asked for blue.  I needed enough for 48 cupcakes, but that wasn't a problem in the Bosch either.

The recipe for the icing is your standard buttercream icing, which is one stick of butter, a little milk, 1 tsp vanilla and about five cups of powered sugar.  Because I was going to take these to a pool party and we were going to be outside, I used half buttered flavored Crisco.  I didn't want it to melt.  

I think they turned out fine and it only took me about an hour and 1/2 from start to finish. I will give you my break down on the cost.  The cake mix was $1.25 each, so  $2.50 for the mix.  The liners were $1.00.  I buy powdered sugar in bulk from Sams for around $1.00 a pound and I used 2 pounds.  The Crisco ran about $1.25 for the amount I used.  I buy butter for $10.00 for 4 pounds and I only used one stick, which is about $.60.  I already had the blue coloring.  So for less than $7.00 I was able to supply plenty of birthday cupcakes.