With the Summer 2012 Olympics in full swing, we decided to use the Games as the theme for my son's belated birthday celebration, making "Olympic rings" cupcakes and torches. We chose to follow the 1-2-3-4 Cake recipe from James Beard's   wonderful American Cookery cookbook. My son loved this recipe name and asked me if we were only making 4 cupcakes? I explained no, the name comes from the ingredient "formula," which includes: 1 cup butter, 2 cups sugar, 3 cups flour and 4 eggs. Before the days of standard measurements this not only made the recipe easier to remember, but also made for a successful product, as the baker only needed one cup measurement. According to Beard, this cake has probably been the most popular of all American cakes over the years. It was originally made as a loaf cake and contained no liquid, but was increasingly preferred as a layer cake. Well, it worked beautifully as cupcakes too! Here's what we did:
1-2-3-4 Cupcakes
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
3 cups sifted flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. In a separate bowl, sift the flour with the baking powder and salt. Add the eggs one at a time to the butter mixture, beating at a medium to high speed. Turn off the mixer and add the flour mixture, then turn to the lowest speed and add the milk and vanilla. Spoon into cupcake liners and bake at 375 F for 15-20 min.
For the "torches," I put cake-style ice cream cones into a muffin pan, spooned in the batter to about 2/3 full, then baked them at 325 F for 30 min.
We iced them with the Butter Cream Frosting recipe also from American Cookery:
1/3 cup softened butter
3 cups confectioners sugar
3-4 tablespoons cream (or milk)
1 tsp vanilla
Cream together the butter and sugar, and vigorously stir in the cream. Flavor with vanilla.

We tinted the frosting into the colors we needed for the rings, and orange for the torch flame (accented with yellow and red colored sugar). They looked great and were a big hit! Go Team USA!!