Altered Cupcake Liners!

Cupcakes are fun and easy to make.. well until you get crazy about the shape and size like I did!

My cupcakes tended to look like this strawberry one: http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/strawberry-cupcakes?&backto=true&backtourl=/photogallery/our-best-cupcakes#slide_2 i.e. smaller at the bottom and then larger at the top .... I find them a bit too small and wanted them to look more like this chocolate one: http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/devils-food-cupcakes-book?&backto=true&backtourl=/photogallery/classic-cupcakes#slide_1 i.e. more uniform from top to bottom (i'm referring to the cupcake itself - the cake part not the topping/icing)...

I used a standard muffin pan and regular medium sized liners... but after getting some input from the wonderful folks at CC I decided to go buy a new pan - a pan that cleary had straighter sides for the cupcakes! I ended up with a Wilton aluminum pan (seen below).

Then I ran into the next problem - liners! Standard liners are made for standard pans (i.e. ones with very slanted sides - smaller at the bottom and larger at the top)... I looked online for a source for the larger bottomed liners but couldn't find any and being impatient I decided to make the best of it and was going to make my own liners to look like this:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/jtomas/3255006824/in/photostream/ made out of squares of parchement paper but that too took too much time (just to make 1) - i was really impatient today ;) so it then hit me - why not 'alter' the ones I had!!

I put the basic liners  that I had (100 for $1 from the Dollar store) into the pan and then looked around to find something like a jar or glass that had a base the same size as the bottom of the cupcake pan... this is what I found and did:

Yup! that's a small jar of CheezeWhiz turned upside down! I added the liner to the pan (pic to the left of the jar), then placed the jar in the liner and twisted/turned/spun it around 3-4 times and then when I removed the jar the liner was a perfect fit (picture to the right of the jar)!

And here is the final result: a cooked cupcake with my 'altered liners'! The sides are much more vertical!! I love it!