Where's that paddle when you need it?

One of my friends asked me to make the cake for her wedding in November and we narrowed down the flavor options to three.

First one is a peanut butter cupcake with peanut butter frosting, since her finance loves peanut butter. It looked like it was in a tiny canoe, but it has no paddles, so it's up the creek in a jungle full of peanut-loving animals without a paddle. Poor cupcake:



The next one is a Dulce de Leche cupcake. It's a vanilla base with Dulce de Leche filling and a DDL buttercream on top. The exciting part with this one is that after years of watching my mom make DDL, I finally made it all by myself. I even resisted that 11pm call to check with her how long it needs to cook. It came out great!



The last one she picked was just plain vanilla with vanilla buttercream. So instead of of showing you that one, I'll show you what I did with all the extra peanut butter batter... PB&J cupcakes! I filled each one with strawberry jam and drizzled chocolate on top. If I hadn't had to work all night and then again all day from home, I'd have brought all of these to share with co-workers. Oh darn, I'll have to find other willing subjects to "dispose of" these cuties: