My bff's baby shower was this weekend, and her mom asked me to make cupcakes for everybody to take home as favors. For a special touch, I baked them in mini panettone papers instead of regular cupcake liners.

They worked great - these little papers stand up on their own after you fill them with batter; you don't need a special pan. Just fill the papers two-thirds full, place them on a cookie sheet, and bake away!

I used this recipe - White Chocolate Cupcakes with Candied Kumquats. Wooo! It was super delish. I don't think I've ever even had a kumquat in my house before, but I saw them in the store last week, and then I came across this recipe, and I knew my kumquat cupcake moment had come.

Candied kumquats sound fancy but really all you do is slice them then boil them in sugar and water for 20 minutes, and they get all nice and transparent and candy-like. The rest of the recipe was great, too. The frosting is a cream cheese frosting, with melted white chocolate. It was really easy to whip up and not fussy at all. The cake itself was really delicious - it has coconut milk in it, in addition to white chocolate, and it came out really nice, firm, moist, and just kind of perfect. I highly recommend this recipe in general - just in regular cupcake papers and without the kumquats, it would still make a great cuppie. Mmm, or a loaf cake.

Anyway, if you want to try the panettone papers, here's a site where you can buy them online. I buy them at New York Cake & Bake on 22nd Street (if you live in the city), and I've also seen them at Sur La Table if you have one of those in your town. I used the 2.5" size, which is actually quite a bit larger than a standard cupcake, so be aware that your recipe will yield fewer panettone cupcakes than regular cupcakes. I doubled my recipe and got about two dozen.

We packed them in chinese take-out containers for everybody to take away. I totally recommend for your next party cake occassion!