4th of July

Happy 4th of July!  My husband and I went to a bbq/pool party with friends and I volunteered to bring the cupcakes.  I made chocolate cupcakes and "yellow" cupcakes with butter cream frosting. I know, I know. I went with the box mixes because they are easy.  The frosting was from scratch of course.  I put the extra time towards making the cutest cupcake flags, instead. They are courtesy of Ellinee.  

Bells will be ringing...

At the end of June, I made some cupcakes for my sister-in-law's Bridal Shower. After digging through lots of cupcake books and my insisting on something light and summery since it is nearly 100 degrees here everyday we settled on the ever popular Blueberry-Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting.  This is the third time I have made them.   

I experimented with ready-made fondant by Duff.  In the past, I have made my own a few times, but it always stresses me out so much.  It was pretty easy to work with.  Just pull it out of the bag, roll it out and go.  I didn't actually taste it though, so I can't comment on that. I should have tried a nibble.  I used it to make monograms for the cupcakes for the Bride to Be.  I must say, I wish I had ordered a stamp or something on line, because Michael's had such a limited selection of fondant cutters/stamps. I was hoping for a more modern or elegant "K" and would up with something much more child like.  

Instead of buying a hard cupcake holder, I purchased a small Wilton build-your own type cupcake holder and at first I was very concerned that I would be digging for my glass cake domes to serve cupcakes in, but once it was together, the bottom two shelves were pretty sturdy.  I added my own ribbon to the edges to spruce it up a bit and it turned out ok.  I am not sure I would buy another one, but for $10.00 and some ribbon, it wasn't a bad deal.  I should have planned ahead and shopped on line a bit.  

Here they are. 

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...

For a friend's son's birthday party I made Harry Potter Hogwarts ties.  In the end, they turned our pretty cute but the road to cuteness was a bumpy one.  Griffendor red is a much harder color to make than one would think.  I started making it with Burgundy food coloring but what I ended up with was HOT PINK! Eek! Panic ensued and then I made an impromptu run to Michael's for red food coloring, because, of course I was out.  After getting some new red and black food coloring, it was back to color mixing.  I was successful in the end by using red, black and brown which looked mauve at first but dried red.  The black edges started out purple and went on the cookies purple but it turned black by the time it dried.  There was some serious Harry Potter magic involved in these cookies looking like the right color.  If I were to make them again, I would use a thinner outside border.  Here they are in all there glory.

Photo Courtesy of Kim L. 

I love the bubbly...

I've wanted to make Champagne Cupcakes for awhile now and finally mustered up the courage to do it.  Pink Champagne Cupcakes with Pink Buttercream Frosting. Mmmm.  I was nervous about the recipe, it required whipping egg whites to stiff peaks...a task i am truly afraid of...anything involving extra care with egg whites always makes me nervous. The recipe is borrowed from The Baking Robot.  

So Pretty.

Mood lighting.

Done and ready to be brought to work tomorrow...Everyone loves Cupcake Mondays!

St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I have been anxiously awaiting St. Patrick's Day so that I use some tiny shamrock sprinkles...for our office St. Patrick's Day Lunch I made Chocolate Cupcakes with MINT Buttercream Frosting.  As a lover of all things peppermint, I was pretty excited.  Thankfully I used all but a tiny teaspoon of the frosting on the cupcakes because if there was anymore left over, I surely would have found myself on the couch eating a bowl of frosting.  I used Wilton grass cupcake liners and made the cutest cupcake picks courtesy of The Tomkat Studio blog.  

Seriously, how cute are these Shamrocks?

Tada! Done and ready to eat at work.

Wedding Bells and Flower Cupcakes...

Well I successfully made it through my first ever wedding and wow was it crazy.  A total of 120 cupcakes and 1 "small" carrot cake for the bride and groom Megan and Jesse.  Half chocolate cupcakes and half yellow buttermilk with buttercream frosting.  i am literally sore today from what i assume is a combination of decorating 120 cupcakes as flowers and shredding 1 lb of carrots.  Really, i stapled something at work this morning and wanted to cry...i might have even yelped a little.  On that note, i shredded them by hand because i FORGOT that i have a very lovely KitchenAid Food Processor that would have done the trick in a matter of seconds.  Who forgets that? I guess since it's not on the counter i don't think about it. Speaking of KitchenAid appliances, what did people do before the KitchenAid stand up mixer? Really.  Anyway, I'm pretty exhausted so here are the photos.  There aren't many because Saturday was a mad dash to get everything done in time and get to the wedding not covered in sugar and food coloring.  

Flowers!

There they are in all their glory.

Congratulations Megan and Jesse! I am so glad I was able to be a part of your day!

Making Strides...My Month of Baking

Whew...October went fast.  It was a whirlwind of baking and I honestly don't even remember everything that i made, besides cinnamon rolls....from scratch.  If you've never made them from scratch, here's a word of warning...they literally take between 3 and 4 hours from start to finish.  You should not start them at 7:00pm on a Sunday and expect to start your week off well slept.  They didn't sell in my bake sale as fast as i expected, so i imagine they weren't as sticky/gooey as they were supposed to be...In any event, we raised a lot of money towards Making Strides Against Breast cancer and The American Cancer Society and it felt good but was rather exhausting to put together delicious baked goods on Mondays and Fridays.  

For Halloween i made a fun new recipe for the pumpkin lovers of the world...Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes with Pumpkin Buttercream Frosting!  I got my inspiration and recipes from the i am baker blog, which i love! These were SO very easy to make.  My husband said they weren't quite "pumpkiny" enough.  Next time i will review the recipe for pumpkin pie and add some other spices into the recipe to bring out the pumpkin flavor.

  

Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes with Pumpkin Buttercream

If i make them again, i will make more frosting, because i barely had enough for 24 cupcakes and the proportion of frosting didn't look right for the cupcakes.

And a tiny chocolate covered sunflower seed to add an extra hint of fall.

It's almost...you guessed it...Sugar Cookie Season.  But first...Thanksgiving.  i am pretty sure that i will be making these cupcakes again for Thanksgiving and just giving them some extra Pumpkin-Oomph.