Today I brought a massive collection of cupcakes to the office.

Cappuccino cupcakes with caramel Swiss meringue frosting, chocolate cupcakes with chocolate Swiss meringue frosting, carrot cupcakes with cream cheese Swiss meringue frosting, banana cupcakes with caramel topping and (the one non-cupcake offering) peanut butter and dark chocolate biscotti. I do not even have enough space to put this many baked goods out for consumption in my office. I managed, though, and hopefully people will eat what remains tomorrow.

I went a little nuts on the Swiss-meringue-style frosting — I had a lot of edge-of-expiration eggs and figured this was an excellent opportunity to try out different flavors for the slightly more difficult/time consuming, but infinitely nicer, frosting option. Traditional buttercream frosting is always too sweet and ends up too grainy/gritty. No such impediments with a well-made Swiss meringue. That is not to say that I experienced no problems. Somehow my first attempt at caramel Swiss meringue did not come together, and when it finally did, it seemed that I added too much butter and ended up with a kind of waxy concoction that might have been better suited to sculpture. Ugh. Second attempt was much better, and the other kinds of frosting came together better.

Most of the recipes for the actual cupcakes have already been featured on this blog somewhere. But will repost anyway when I post pics.