Cupcake fail

Bailey's birthday is fast approaching (WAY faster than I can believe) and thanks to Pinterest I have seen lots and lots of ideas for her polka-dot themed party.

One idea I really like are polka dot cupcakes like these:

Via

Via

I decided to give them a try yesterday while the little Miss was napping.

First I made the batter and divided it so that I could color half of it to make the dots. I put the original color in first and then piped in a few dots of the blue color. I covered the dots with more of the regular batter and baked them. 

Well...as you can see, the dots didn't really come out as expected. The blue kind of swirled around and didn't stay defined as dots.

*they probably would have stayed dot-like if I didn't add the original batter on top, but then they would be covered by frosting and not visible anyway*

I think I may try the cake idea since you bake the colored batter first and they probably stay more dot-like. But if that doesn't work, then I'll probably just make regular cupcakes and add dots on the frosting.

I like these two for polka dots on the frosting:

We're going with a simple party with a few fun touches.
What is something memorable you've done for a birthday to make it special?