Carrots On Top

Geez O I can't seem to catch up.......ahhh!! But next week I don't have a SINGLE cake request. So I will likely have time to put together a few of the posts and set them to be scheduled and just pop up. Although I think I am 20 cakes back at this point......that should get me through the whole summer for posts right?

These cupcakes were for a neighbors friend - Carrot Cake!! We have the BEST ever carrot cake recipe at our house. While I like a few cake flavors.....Carrot has always been my favorite. Add in some pineapple and take out the nuts and you have a great recipe. Dave created this one with a recipe he found somewhere that he tweaked a bit. It is delicious!! Create a nice little Cream Cheese icing and you have a dream!!

The carrots were just a simple little cute topper. There are a few recipes that I love - and they all seem to involve fruits and veggies in them - which adds to the cost of buying the ingredients AND to the time of prepping the fruits and veggies for baking - Lucky for me I don't have a ton of extra time and money to put into them on a more common basis or I would be ginormous from eating them - but when it is time for a treat it is 100% worth the effort to do it.

Sweet Hearts

Of course today is Valentine's Day!! And goodness knows that this past weekend I have been doing TONS of Valentine Cupcakes for school parties. This particular cupcake order went out to one of Dave's co-workers. And this was a bit of a lesson in being nice and helpful.

So she ordered 18 cupcakes for a certain date. Wanted a large Red Heart on each one. The date for the order was a Friday and Dave was going to deliver to her at his work. That morning I got up super upder duper early to make sure I could bake the cupcakes - cool them - and frost them (the hears were already made) before he left at 7:30am. That done I sent the orderer an email saying everything was Great and He would be bringing them in.

She was at work super upder duper early and sent one back saying, "Errr....ahhhh....well I must have given you the wrong date". She had - she mixed her parties up - lucky her to have so many parties to attend that don't include elementary school kids. Lucky her.

So what to do?? She was very sweet and said "no worries - just send them and I will freeze them." Yeah, that is one way - but what would the fondant hearts look like - and what would they taste like? So instead I said, "No these can be fun cupcakes for Dave to take to work" - which he was totally willing to do, but he said there was no way he was offering a heart shaped cupcake to one of the men or woman he worked with (fear that they would think he was crushing on them? hmmmm....ego there) - instead he would leave them out and peeps could take them through the day.

The next week I got up again....super upder duber early and made 18 cupcakes with big read hearts on them. And everyone was happy!! Another bright side - I got to tweak my red velvet cake recipe. Thought it might be yummier with a bit more cocoa in it. Red Velvet is apparently the cupcake for Valentines day I am seeing......so might as well make it fabulous.

This cupcake was Red Velvet (obviously)...Cream cheese icing and a Vanilla fondant shaped to look like big red hearts. SWEET!!

Hoo Hoo..........Owl Cake

Do owls really say Hoot? Because sometimes it sounds more like Who..........to me. And more recently it sounded like a piercing scream that would be more like a woman being murdered in the woods...........but I understand that was the sound of a Screech Owl - perhaps a Normal Owl does say simply "Hoot".........when he wants a Tootsie Roll Sucker I guess.

This particular owl was a copy off of something I saw on the Internet again. It was a flicker post otherwise I would link to the website/blog it came from. Usually when you find something this cute you also find other cookies really cute too.

So this cake was also for the Craft Show Bakery - and it went home with a nice family too. A good friend of mine who said it was yummy.

The cake was Carrot Cake with a Cream Cheese icing and a Vanilla Fondant.........the owl being brown makes you think Chocolate though doesn't it?

Hostess Wanna Be's

Okay so the last post hinted at this..........but I didn't want to give it away too soon. When I was doing the Baby Shower Surprise cupcakes Dave was lurking around tasting things. He loved the center filling of the cucpakes and noticed that there was some left. I also had chocolate cake batter left and we were headed to a party the next day.............he asked nicely what I might be doing with all that left over stuff. And so I did this for Dave (mostly).

Baked out the batter into cupcakes - hollowed them out using my dorky makeshift tools (I did though go to the store to get a cupcake corer - apparently they are all the rage and the store sold out - can you say Christmas list?). Filled the cupcakes with the yummy goo - but I topped the hole with a tiny bit of buttercream to seal it smoothly...........because.............

I made a Chocolate Ganache and topped the cupcakes with it. The ganache becomes solid and takes on the fudgy texture similar to a Hostess cupcake. But I didn't want the ganache sinking into the hole with the filling............thus the cap.

Then I took some buttercream and made the swirlies. Perhaps I could be sued for copyright - but really isn't the saying......Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery?

And OH MY GOODNESS..........I am not a huge chocolate person, but this cupcake had the perfect blend of chocolate, not too over the top sweet because of the semi sweet chocolate ganache and the creamy filling. I think we will totally be seeing these cupcakes at bake sales!!

These were a Chocolate Chocolate Chip cake with a Cream Cheese Marshmallow filling and a Chocolate Ganache top..........perfect!!

Baby Shower Surprise

Cupcakes are very wanted these days - guess is it the no fuss no mess thing they bring. You can skip plates, forks and only use a napkin for cupcakes. But sometimes the center icing melded into cake part of a cake is the BEST part - so fillings are becoming popular. Often people ask me if I have a giant syringe that I put the filling in with............nope..........I use this.........a candy thermometer sheath and a sharp stick - usually a skewer.

I take a bunch of perfect cupcakes and poke the plastic tube in, twist and pull out the cake. Then use the skewer to make the cake drop out. I get a bunch of cupcakes with holes. Then I fill the holes up.

Cover the top with some fondant and the person biting into them never knows about the surprise........until the hit it. Everyone loves a surprise right?

Now this particular set of cakes was going to a baby shower. And the mom to be had a cute idea of how to surprise the guests in telling them the sex of the baby. Only when she went to her doctors appointment the baby turned on them and hide the surprise of what he/she was. When she called to tell me that she sounded so sad and I felt kinda bad...........so I whipped up some fondant baby bottles to put on top of the cakes. Nothing overly creative - I only had 20 minutes to make 24 bottles. So they are mildly basic - but you get the idea.

So here was what the final product looked like - I didn't put the bottles on because I didn't ask her if I could. Instead I brought the bottles and gifted them to her and let her decide.

Normal cupcake right?

Surprise!!!! It's a boy cupcake!! (Yes I know stereotypes stereotypes)...........

I kept one cupcake back to taste and put a baby bottle on this one for my own use. So - again - normal cupcake.........

Surprise!!! It's a Girl!!!!

Too bad it didn't work out for her - this would have been a super cute thing to do. I hear now that it is very popular.

There were 24 cupcakes. Half were Milk Chocolate with a Chocolate Buttercream icing - the other 12 were White Silk cake with a Vanilla Buttercream icing. The filling on all of them was a Cream Cheese Marshmallow...........tasted a smidge more delicious then the center of a Hostess Cupcake.

Birds of a Feather - Part III - Celebrating Adoption

After making the nest and the birds - waiting a few days so everything would be nice and fresh......it was time to bake the layers of the cake. I didn't take too many pictures of that. The bottom layer was my favorite - Carrot Cake - the middle was a from scratch Strawberry Cake (I get to learn new things from others choices) - and the top layer was a Coconut Cake (another newbie to me). All done in two cakes to give a little extra height. And yes.........I warned them they would have enough cake to feed all of the community.

Iced........the Carrot got Cream Cheese (of course) - the Strawberry received a Buttercream coating (which I whipped and it made the icing all crunchy.....won't be doing that for decorating under fondant again - makes the fondant bumpy) - the Coconut received a Cream Cheese with some Vanilla & Almond flavoring in them........yummy.

Then came the fondant. Practice Makes Perfect.......Practice Makes Perfect..........Practice Makes Perfect.......Rolling fondant out is super easy (in a building your bodies upper strength kinda way).......but not having the right tools makes the event super challenging because even if you get it all right on the counter - you still have to pick it up and put it on the cake.

The other day I hit this blog site about cakes - a supposed novice like myself doing cakes for fun and documenting them. Her cakes looked FABULOUS and were titled "My first fondant cake" - PERFECT - "My second fondant cake" - MORE PERFECT - "My third fondant cake" - FREAKING AMAZING......in my head - "well if she can do that me too!!"

While it certainly looks like I have that all under control.......this is where photography can create an illusion and where I began to wonder if the person on the Internet claiming to be so fabulous the first go round was telling the truth - because looks can be deceiving......

Flip my cake around and this is what you see..............AHHHH!!!! Sure it rolled out great - in theory all you have to do is roll it onto the rolling pin and you will be golden.........Sure......"My first fondant cake" (not really mine....just channeling the cake site hit).

This is where having children is helpful for me. After crying out loud - like seriously finally breaking down and crying (for about 15 seconds) and having my children stand in shock watching.........I picked myself up - looked them in the eye and said, "There is always a way to make things better." and then something along the lines of, "Never be a quitter."

Then I started to get creative. The other day I also watched a video on YouTube about making fondant bows. While I had never tried to do this before I figured.......it can't get worse right? Did the bow fix the problem? No not really -but it was a good start and I did still have all that beautifully colored fondant left to find a way to decorate the cake with.

Color on a blank pallate can change everything..........and distract the eye. So the night prior to the final fondant I had spent some time making different types of flower and things to place on the cake. Remember the only real design element that was asked for was color - nothing about how to get it into the design - just that it existed in the final product. These colors all matched the Bird Family.

As I began putting the flowers and leaves onto the cake and around the areas of the un-sightly fondant - I began to notice that I no longer really noticed the gaping fondant mistakes that were part of the cake.

I also began to realize why so many fondant cakes have either a real ribbon around the base of the cake - or they have a fondant strip in a color that is made to LOOK like a ribbon at the base of each tier. Things are becoming clearer to me. Those perfect cakes may be more of an illusion - and it may be why so many of the photos are not taken as "up close" as my photos are. Smart bakers.

Still all the added color and the bows did take care of the truly tear inducing look of my fondant covering. At this point in the decorating I was feeling like announcing - with happiness - "My first fondant cake - I am AWESOME!"

and there was one side of the cake that DID look close to perfect - it was the BACK SIDE - where I was able to leave just a few flowers so that all the eyes were pulled forward into the camouflaged area.

Personally I quite like the back.

The nest and the cake.......notice the nest is darker now? Yes, as I said earlier - once the cake was covered I noticed that the white fondant and the light tannish color of the original birds nest really kinda washed out compared to the colorful flowers and the colorful bird family. So a quick fix was in order for the families nest. Darker worked much better.

The Final Cake. I was so happy to have this done and looking really really cute. Yea Me!!

Even more so - Yea the Family that has built a Nest so loving that they could add 5 children to is in less then 1 year. Our family is very proud to have them as our friends and we were so happy to be part of their special day.

Wedded Bliss Cupcakes

Yeah Fondant!! No really.....I am becoming much more familiar with Fondant. Fondant loves me and I am begining to actually love Fondant too. This was totally fun because I was getting to try new things and create.

What I was doing was creating cupcakes for a 30th Wedding Anniversary party. Friends of Dave at work had asked me if I could do it. See Dave often takes in things that I bake, but don't want to eat, and shares. His friend knew I could bake and Dave had shown him pics of things I had decorated. Their "cake lady" was unavailable (hey maybe I can become someone's "cake lady") and they asked if I could help in the pinch. And his wife said I could do whatever I wanted - but she kinda wanted cupcakes - hmmmm........ahhhh Yeah Totally!!

So I searched some ideas. Again - I figure someone has already been there before me so might as well learn from some of their ideas. Found some really cute flower ideas and started rolling out some fondant I made. Cutting them into 3 sizes of flowers.

Then I pulled out some Vodka and some Luster Dust in the shades of Silver and Pearl. The theme items were all being purchased in those shades - apparently 30th Anniversary is Pearl. So I mixed the vodka and luster dust and began painting the flowers.

Once done they looked like this. I have to say that although it was a smidge time consuming - it was really fun!! and simple.

The cupcakes were all simple. Yellow and Chocolate. Easy........the icing was by request a Cream Cheese. Yummy!! So I topped each cupcake with a simple swirl of icing.

Then took the individual flowers and stacked them - using a smidge of icing in between each flower as glue and a small candy pearl in the center.

I have mentioned before that I don't always like to Reinvent the Wheel.....and this flower is not much different. The first flower I saw that sparked this idea was on the Bakeface blog that I love to follow. She has brilliant things that you might see me copy and these flowers are the start. You can see her creation that sparked my plan here.


Popped a completed flower on top of each of the cupcakes and Viola!! A completely cute cupcake that looks elegant and fun all at the same time. Of course, as cute as these were......they weren't exactly the whole party theme......we were missing 2 characters......

One of those characters was the Groom. Here he is with his box of chocolate cupcakes. How cute is that right?

And then there was also a box with the Bride and her yellow cucpakes.

I have to say that these two cupcakes were much easier to create then all the flowers - and they turned out really cute. Basic fondant layered over the cream cheese icing - then adding a few elements - the flower on the lapel - the buttons from fondant - the dress texture is thicker pearl luster dust painted on with a small amount of edible pearl colored glitter - and then a necklace of candy pearls. TahDah!!

Coconut Deliciousness

Yummy!! Cupcake Break.

There have been a lot of cakes recently. Of course it is Birthday Season here. Still it is nice to take a break and try something different.

Since Chocolate, Yellow, White and Banana are consistently baked in our house I thought we should try a new flavor. Coconut. Someone that is considering asking me to make them a cake has requested a Coconut cake. I can honestly say that I have never made one. So I began the search for a cake that I could be willing to happily hand over to them.

The recipe that I settled on was one I found on the Food Network presented by The Barefoot Contessa -

Coconut Cake
3/4 pound (3 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus more for greasing the pans
2 cups sugar
5 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoons pure almond extract
3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the pans
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup milk
4 ounces sweetened shredded coconut

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 2 (9-inch) round cake pans, then line them parchment paper. Grease them again and dust lightly with flour.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar on medium-high speed for 3 to 5 minutes, until light yellow and fluffy. Crack the eggs into a small bowl. With the mixer on medium speed, add the eggs 1 at a time, scraping down the bowl once during mixing. Add the vanilla and almond extracts and mix well. The mixture might look curdled; don't be concerned.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the dry ingredients and the milk to the batter in 3 parts, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Mix until just combined. Fold in the 4 ounces of coconut with a rubber spatula.

I baked these into cupcakes - they took 14 minutes each. However if you were baking into cakes the batter could be divided into 2 pans and then baked for 40-45 minutes. This recipe and directions came directly from the site - no tweaking involved.

The icing was not the one listed on the site. I used a simple Cream Cheese icing. After placing a bit of icing on the cupcakes I topped them with a tiny bit of shredded coconut.

The result was delicious!!

Goal!! I beat the Soccer Ball

A new icing is in town and it scored a GOAL for me in decorating!! Finally a variation in icings. Vanilla Cream Cheese icing!!


This was a fun cake done for a friends son. He was turning 13 and she asked if I would do a cake for him. Easy enough. I was thinking "how do you decorate a cake for a teenage boy?" Catherine said just to ice it - I wanted to decorate it. Knowing a bit about her son I looked for soccer stuff. Then came up with this cake. She said to go for it. In a cream cheese icing please.

Cream Cheese? Hmmm.....easy enough - it is whitish - I can color that. I didn't think about how it is stickier though. Do you know how many times I bump a cake as I decorate it? Enough to know that there might be a whispered curse word as I decorated this.

And there was, but only maybe 1 or 2. Overall the cream cheese icing was a splendid experience. So I had to wash my hands a few extra times - licking the icing off before I did was a nice treat!! Is my bottom bigger?


But the BIGGEST TREAT?? Catherine said that when her son took a look at it he got all smiley. Teenage boys getting excited about their birthday cake - now that is a World Cup kinda score.

Carrot Cake Cupcakes

Hoppy Easter!!!