Key Lime Cupcakes & a Week of Cupcakes!

July 24th huh? That was my last post here and yet it was not the last cake that I did..........so I could think of this as slacking - only with all the kids home for the summer I am hardly getting to sit down let alone SLACK! To save you all from a rant about my having to chase children around to clean or shuttle future adults to library weekly for books and movies - we will just forget that stream of thought and do a Week Of Cupcakes!!

This cupcake is a Key Lime Cupcake. Now as usual nothing is original in my mind. This cupcake I am 100% certain has been done a million times over - I think this because I did a search to see if there were recipes and how folks did them. Why I did the search though is because a friend, Pennie, made a Key Lime pie. Never having made one myself I asked what goes into it. She explained it - surprised me that while there were separate steps NONE of them sounded all that hard, just time consuming a smidge (tiny smidge). The pie was wonderful!! It was totally gone by the end of the evening. A few days later she mentioned her husband suggested I try making a Key Lime Cupcake. And thus the search for what makes a Key Lime Cupcake to folks all over was mine.

There are TONS and TONS and TONS of different recipes. Key Lime cake as the base of the cupcake - Key Lime filling - Key Lime icing - and combinations of many different. To me it seemed like many of them were missing the Graham Cracker bottom - only then I noticed that many of them had Graham Crackers sprinkled INTO the cupcake paper and then the cake batter placed over that so it baked into a pseudo crust. Not what I was envisioning.

Finally I figured out what would be totally Yum and kinda close to Pennie's Pie - because that was my personal goal - a Graham Cracker cake. Figured that out in less time then it took to search all the Key Lime stuff. Substitute pureed Graham Crackers (cinnamon grahams are the best in my opinion - but I would put cinnamon in everything - except my husbands rubs for smokin' - he does that, but cinnamon doesn't belong there I think) for part of the flour in a basic Butter cake recipe. Gave that a WhipUp and taste tested it and OHMYGOODNESS that was YUMMY all by itself!! I immediately envisioned a Ton of different cupcakes I could do with that and sent the recipe to my Sis-In-Law who was looking to do a good S'mores cupcake.
So then there was the figuring out of the main part of the cake - Key Lime. I did more research on this then I would have thought because of the egg involved. The cupcake wasn't going to go into the oven a second time - the filling would be inserted into the cupcake after baking - that created a problem with the eggs. Although much research about the egg being combined with the sugar and the sugar/egg ratio then eliminating the possibility of salmonella poisoning being gone........it still made me nervous.

Key Lime makes me think of Lemon (duh) and one of my favorite Lemon treats is a Lemon Curd that my friend, Sarah, made me years and years and years ago. So my thought was why not make a Key Lime Curd which would kill off the salmonella problem - mix that with the Sweetened Condensed Milk that goes into the pie filling and pipe that into the center of a cupcake? Genius right? Again - surely someone has done this, but I didn't find it on line this time so I wasn't 100% it would work.

First task - Squeezing all these dang Key Limes. I did it with my glass lemon juicer - see it there in the back of the pic? Took me a whole piano lesson + some time to do it - Key Limes are way too tiny!!! Don't do that!!! See a few days later guess what I saw that someone had done.......used a Garlic Press because half a Key Lime fits perfect into a press - DUH!! Brilliant!! So do that - don't do what I did.
Then there was the melting of some butter. Do you love watching butter melt? At first I do. Not sure why. Then I become incredibly impatient and start moving the butter around to get on with it already.

Added the egg yolks - the Key Lime juice and a bit zest - the sugar - and waited - well didn't really WAIT.......

Rather I stirred and stirred and stirred and stirred until the wanted thickening happened and the consistency that was desired was reached. I have finally figured out that you do not want it to be thickened completely on the stove........that took a few doings years back to realize. See how Instant Pudding ruins our ability to learn things the right way? It will thicken a bit more as it cools off.

So a smart girl who runs a hobby blog about cakes and things she creates would have taken a picture of the process of adding the cooled Key Lime curd in with the SCMilk right? Or maybe a picture of the delicious Graham Cracker cupcake? Yeah probably - but who knows a smart girl like that around here?

What you see is what you get I am afraid. Hulled the center of the yummy cupcake - filled it with Key Lime filling - topped that with a White Chocolate Icing - sprinkled a tiny bit of the crushed grahams and then started taking them around the area for testing.

Only one person suggested a change.......which I was totally ready for - only after saying that he had something to say it turned out to be, "This is probably the best cupcake I have every had".

So I am going with this one is a winner. The next day I started getting calls asking me if I would make them for a neighbors Red Hat meeting - Winner.

How to turn your Hand Red

For heaven's sake!! I was searching through my lists of posts on this blog to clean anything up that was sitting around and found these pics ready to be posted! Holy cow this is from like January or February - well I think the cupcakes were Valentines so totally February.

What is this thing? Well this is a picture of the FABULOUS gift my Mother-in-law gave me for Christmas. I really really wanted this. It is an airbrush. Now I am not new to airbrushing. In High School I airbrushed in my drafting and architecture classes. Well really it was in architecture. Remember - I mentioned before that I took drafting/arch all through High School. Mr. Jackson, our teacher, was kind enough to kinda make up - fashion - create - new classes for 6 of us (was it 6? Kelly, Mike, Fred, Brad, Me....Steve may have been in it too, but he wasn't in our specific group of every year together in the class - so I guess it was 5). By the fourth year we had kinda run through most of the classes I think - there was Drafting - Arch I and Arch II. Hmmm...it was 25 years ago.....maybe there were 2 Draftings and 2 Arch, but since each class was a semester there were really 8 semesters and - well like you really care anyway.......so there was a group of us who took a lot of drafting type classes and Mr. Jackson liked us all enough to keep us going with new areas of the field to teach us - plus he took us to yearly competitions (cool). Toward the end we were creating the exterior plans and then using different mediums to create the presentation - like markers, pencils, water colors and AIRBRUSHING.

Based on the grades I remember receiving I was pretty darn good at all the mediums except.....yes.....Airbrushing. I can remember Steve was excellent at airbrushing - in fact I am fairly sure he opened a tshirt shop where he airbrushed art work onto tshirts like they do at Six Flags. Okay maybe not.....but it is a possibility that it happened. I will ask Mary Jo - she always secretly crushed on him.

So I still keep in touch with Mr. Jackson. FB is a wonderful thing right? However, even before FB I had been in contact - visited - things like that. He had been following my cakes a bit - sending me some ideas and things. Both He and Dave had brought up the Airbrush and the thought that using it might open up some decorating techniques for me. Sounded fun - just needed to get one and at the time I wasn't doing enough "cakes for friends" to buy more then the supplies needed to bake a cake........so I put it on my Christmas list and my wonderful Mom-in-law made the purchase. YEA!
Anyway - back to my brand new totally coveted and wanted Airbrush. I opened it - it looked the same as the one I used in HS. And then the paralyzing fear of it came back. The AIRBRUSH. My classroom nemesis. I hated the Airbrush. How could I have forgotten how much I DID NOT like the Airbrush??

I mean look at the direction picture that details each part!! Ugh. The first day Mr. Jackson gave us the airbrush and had us dismantal it and then put it back together after identifying the parts and figuring out what each one does. Ugh. Now I have to do it again......the flash back fear of a test became overwhelming. However, I was determined to figure this thing out......to see how using it could open up new cake decorating techniques. Only that week I had seen them airbrush the tops of cupcakes quickly and easily........and I was donating about 100 cupcakes to various classrooms at our school for Valentines - so airbrushing all of them vs actually mixing enough red dye into buttercream made sense financially as well as in time.

So I didn't close the airbrush casing........I kept going.........Finish Strong is what we tell the kids.
But then I found the directions.......Ugh.......they were so long!! And there were all these various pieces to deal with........ugh.......

But then I looked closer at the pieces........with the flash back of test anxiety came a flash back of recognition as to how to put together all the pieces of the airbrush. So pushing the directions aside I picked up the airbrush pieces and assembled it. Hey this wasn't so hard - 25 years and I could still build an airbrush - Whooo Hoooo Me!!

But I should read the directions.......But I didn't want to........They were long.......They were boring..........They weren't as fun as just sticking some of the food safe dye into the airbrush and Going For It!! Who needed those stinkin' directions anyway!! I took Architecture in High School and I already KNEW how to use the airbrush.........I am Airbrush Woman watch me CREATE!!

I poured the correct amount of dye into the pot. Closed it all up. Set it for spraying things. Put a cupcake on a plate and..........
Well and then I totally missed the cupcake on my first try.

The second try was a little bit better.........but almost as lame as the first try. I counseled myself into comfort by saying this was a "lack of reading the directions".......no, this missing thing was more just a rustiness due to the 25 year time span of NOT having to use the airbrush in class.

After about half the cupcakes I started to get better. There were certainly blotching spots on some because my hand didn't have the grapse of slowly pulling back the trigger to release the dye, but with each cupcake I became a smidge better. Ben came by and wanted to try - so I let him. His were worse then mine so I patted myself on the back and said in my head, "See don't feel poorly about the way yours look. They are WAY better then his look!".......of course he is a 9 year old boy who has never in his life touched an airbrush.....and they only looked an itty bitty bit worse then mine........and he had the sense to say, "Hey if we add a few of those tiny chocolate chips you have on each cupcake they will look even better"......and he was right.

In the end he was probably the better airbrush artist.

Once they were all sprayed it was time to clean the airbrush. AGAIN I pulled those instructions out and looked at them. Geez O who needs directions.......I cleaned the airbrush out a million times. So I started the process of cleaning this one out. How hard can it be? Well honestly - not hard at all......unless you don't really remember HOW to clean our the airbrush and you are kinda just winging it based on the fact that you are too dang lazy to read the directions.

And with that.........

I turned my hand red.

And the counter. And the cloth that I had to use to clean the counter up. And 2 other cloths too.

Now you may be wondering........Did She Ever Use The Airbrush Again? Bet you think I didn't. Well you are wrong. I have used it, but not much to be honest. I am utterly scared of the thing. I saw on line that my absolute favorite cake decorator - who I have pilgrimaged across the country (okay only from IL to TN) to meet in person at her shop - was setting up an airbrushing class with a cake decorator who is in those competitions and teachers.......but I can't just drive to TN for a class.......and I couldn't find one around here. I should mess around with it more though because I have seen some seriously cute things done with an airbrush on a cake.

Now are you wondering did I read the directions? What do you think?

Of Course Not!!

Jenna Rose & Rose's roses

Here is a little secret.............I have never taken a decorators class. Here is another secret.............no matter how hard I try I have never been able to figure out icing roses. Oh I try and try and try. I watch the YouTube video's people post to teach them.......check out books at the library.....buy the right tips.....make the right icing.....make the OTHER right icing.....but I can't make an icing rose to save my life. So I have been experimenting with fondant and gumpaste. This is as far as I have gotten.

While the roses are pretty cute - I think that the stems look a little like Asparagus. So maybe I need to shift my focus from worrying about how well I can do roses and take a class on making stems not look like Asparagus?

This cake was asked for by a friend who works at Western Ave. - a local community center that works to keep kids and families connected with the things they need to be successful. She wanted to bring a nice cake for a hard working volunteer. I had the honor of meeting Rose later on a delivery there and she is a VERY sweet woman. Now I suppose I should look into decorator classes.........or at least trying the more difficult roses I have seen in videos??

This cake was half Chocolate and half White with a Chocolate Buttercream icing. Vanilla fondant was used for the flowers (like you didn't already know that).

Baby Showers should be all about the Mom~To~Be

I wish wish wish wish I could find the napkin that this image was copied off of!! My friend suggested me to her friend and asked if I could do a baby shower cake. Red Velvet. Red Velvet is one of those mystery cakes to me. What is the draw? It isn't Chocolate cake exactly because there are about 3 TBS of cocoa in it..........but it certainly isn't a Yellow or a White cake because there are about 3 TBS of cocoa in it. Yet is vaguely tastes like both. My family didn't have Red Velvet hanging around our house. We had White Cake White Icing. That was it mostly - and Chocolate Brownies...........and tons of cookies at the holidays. My mom would bake a MILLION different kinds of cookies. For almost a month she was baking them. Then we would make huge trays of cookies to give to folks and to have around for holiday gatherings. But after that we had Carrot cake and my favorite as a kid German Chocolate Cake (loved the coconut).

What were we talking about?? Oh, the Red Velvet. So Red Velvet. Don't exactly get it. I will however admit that it is kinda yummy - and definately pretty.

So anyway...........this friend of a friend asked me to copy the party napkin she had. This is just a cute cake if you can't see the napkin. It was fun to make. I never heard back from her when I asked how it went...........so hopefully they thought it was as cute as I did - and my friend, Pennie, who I was with when I brought it by the hostesses house on our way to Sam's..........which is a whole other topic.

The cake was Red Velvet (obviously) with a Vanilla Buttercream icing. Now - speaking of Red Velvet and icing. Again - didn't grow up with this cake, but there seems to be A LOT of different trains of thought on what icing goes with the cake. Some say a basic buttercream - some have said a cream cheese - and still others have mentioned a special icing that you cook in a simmer pot on the stove top. If you are a Red Velvet Cake Specialist would you please weigh in and let me know what icing you have experienced on this cake?

A Sweet Cake for my Mom

This is a fun cake that I did for my Mom. She was coming to visit and she was the first baker I ever fell in love and awe with...........but she lives 2.5 hours away..........so I never get to bake for her or have her taste test anything that I make. Anything I am goofing off with and trying to get feedback on I take to friends who love dessert and are honest (or at least I think they are honest) about what might make something better or if I got it right the first time. My mom lives too far away for that. And she lives a little too far away for celebrations like Mother's Day or Birthdays. Sometimes we get to see her on those days, but not always. This year was a "not always" year since she went out of town for Mother's Day and the kids were in a production here in town on her birthday in December. I owed her a cake.

Now I mentioned in another post that growing up when we had cake it was primarily White Cake with White Icing. This is my mom's ALL TIME FAVORITE cake. When we have a celebration that is centered around her we KNOW that it needs to be White Cake with White Icing. Hands down done deal - or you have messed up. But I really want to share my other flavors with her so I took a risk and decided to mess with her White Cake standard............I added some Cinnamom. Because I know she loves Cinnamon (probably where I got the Cinnamon belongs in everything - but not my husbands meat rubs - gene).

So this cake is a Cinnamon Cake with a White Icing (Vanilla Buttercream). I made the cake - Iced it white - and then looked at it.

I wanted to turn it into something pretty. At the same time my mom does not love fondant. Even though I have been told my scratch fondant is yummy - fondant is not White Icing. Yeah, icing is under the fondant, but it changes the texture if not the whole flavor. So fondant as a cover to create something that is "my mom" was out. Then I thought about flowers. Second to her basket and quilting (they are interchangeable hobbies) is her ability to grow things. Veggie gardens and flowers are a call to fame for her in my eyes.

Delicate looking daisies it was. As I was getting the fondant ready for the daisies I thought about color. White - Yellow - yeah those are perfect............but a Raspberry/Plum is "Her" color. I can remember as a kid she always had a shirt in that color. Mom said it was "Her" color. Then when I was a teenager she bought me one of my all time favorite turtle neck sweaters. It was a Raspberry/Plum color. I am fairly certain I wore that sweater in the winter months for about 10 years. As the weave began to stretch a bit and make the sweater longer the style of leggings came in and it changed from a sweater with jeans kinda top to a sweater with black leggings kinda outfit for the clubs. Mom had one to match - only she never came clubbing with us. And yes, I was the dork girl at the club with a turtle neck on..........I rolled with the idea of leaving a bit of mystery to what was under my clothing.......hoping to instill that dress code in my kids (especially my daughter).

So the flower color was born. It was the perfect combination to be a perfect cake for My Mom (in my eyes). Simple - Elegant - Beautiful. Just like My Mom.

When my mom came I envisioned us waiting for the kids to come home from school - sitting and celebrating her and then having a piece of cake. Only none of us was really hungry because - well we just weren't. However, the bigger problem was that Mom didn't want to cut it. She said it was too pretty. So we boxed it up and sent it home with her - with a promise from her that she would tell me what she thought of the flavor. Because for me part of the point of it all was to share a bit of what I am doing with her. The next day I called to see how it was. She said she still couldn't cut it because it was so pretty. She was going to lunch with girlfriends and was baking .............cookies............for the gathering and thought she might take the cake with her to share. The day after that gathering she called and said the cake was a hit. Everyone loved it and she didn't have any leftovers. And that she loved the flavor - plus she was approached by friends to have me make cakes for them...........until they realized I lived 2.5 hours away.

This cake was ........Cinnamon with a Vanilla Buttercream icing and Vanilla Fondant.

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.

Total Apple Yumminess!

Again........I am certain that if I searched this idea it would NOT be original. At the same time - when the thought occured to me it was totally new in my head. Of course if you watch ANY cake or cupcake show on TV it is completely obvious that if you can stick it in a cupcake at this point and time Someone Has Done It!

For me to CASE (copy and steal everything) is not a shameful thing - doing it builds up my own confidence in doing something - what I mean is ...... if I see that you have done something so completely wonderful I would like to see if I can do that wonderful thing too. Once I build my skill at doing something I can master without having to recreate the wheel....then I can move on to original works of my own art with confidence. I know there are folks out there that do not agree with that - they feel that if it is a copy of something else then you aren't really showing that you have the ability to truly create. To that I say...."eh".....the world is how many years old? Someone has likely been there - so don't stress yourself out (my husband might cringe and giggle that I said that - he so doesn't believe that I don't stress - and he is right, but I am stressing about perfection, not about creativity credit - TOTALLY different).

Now on the day of these cupcakes we were both stressing about something not cake related. I came downstairs and found water all over the floor. Thinking someone had been messing with the water button on the fridge I went to get a towel. Then as I did that I began to think that Dave was the only one up after me the night before and unless he got giddy on treats before bed it didn't make sense that he would play with the water button. So as I laid the towel down I opened the freezer door and found a frozen waterfall that was dripping. Our ice maker had decided to go bezerk (how do you spell beserk? bezerk? - oh well phonically you can read that right?). Woke Dave up - began to dismantle the freezer contents and look for the problem. Ice maker.

There were tons of things thawed out........some thrown away - others saveable. And then there were the 5 bags of peeled & cup up pie making apples I had put in before winter came (like we are the Ingalls right?). What to do with them? Pie? No. Crisp? Yum. Cupcakes? Hmmmmm.....

What made the cupcake idea the winner? My new cupcake huller. Just fresh from the store bought for my by my dad for my birthday!! Yes!! I needed something to fill the cupcakes I was longing to use my huller on.

Cupcakes baked - Huller out - simple as apple pie - place into the cupcake - twist - pull out.

Then I dump them into a bowl - originally the idea was for time saving - so I didn't have to twist around and put them in the trash to save my ass (literally)........but then I began to realize that kids like to pop these little pieces in their mouths. So we don't have them often - but they are fun when we did. Probably how donut holes started.

But this pictures shows what the BEST part of making these cupcakes was. The Ginormous vat of apples baking..........yummmmmmmyyyyyyy........all appley and cinnamon and brown sugar with just a smidge of butter to keep them from sticking (you don't really need an entire stick ya know - just a few chunks).

This was the reason that it made it most fun - the house was filled with this yummy smell. Way Way Way better then any candle you can get at the store.............

Once it was cooled off I popped the batch in shifts into the food processor and got rid of the slices and made it a nice, midly chunky, apple sauce like texture. Then took an icing bag out and began to fill the cupcakes................topped them off with some Cinnamon Buttercream.........

and just because some days I have the ability to Over Achieve.....whipped up some homemade from scratch (yes, I realize homemade means "from scratch" - but it was hard and I deserve the double) Caramel.........and drizzled it on top.

Ummmmm Yummmmmm!!! I called them Apple Pie Cupcakes. We were headed to a gathering and called ahead to see if I could bring these and if the hostess thought people would like some Apple Pie Cupakes. My friend, Pennie, said that it was against the law in the US not to like Apple Pie. You get kicked out of the country - which made me think - Red, White & Blue cupcake papers........and so it was........but that night only Pennie got the connection to the papers being all about Apple Pie and Patriotism.......oh well - not everyone can be as brilliant as us.

These cupcakes turned out to be the BOMB. I farmed out a few of the extras to neighbors because the apple filling made more then I could take to friends that night - and I ended up getting folks asking me to make them for other events - SCORE!! Winnner!!

So.......just in case you didn't read the whole post (cheater)........these cupcakes were White cake with Apple Pie filling and Cinnamon Buttercream touched by Caramel sauce. Delish!!

More Girl Scouts!

Here is a Girl Scout Bridging cake that was used for MY Girl Scout troop this year. I love LOVE love my Girl Scouts. When Andersen joined GS's in 3rd grade I went to the registration meeting with her. My goal was NOT to sign up as the leader. I had heard ahead of time that there already was a leader so I figured I was good and there wasn't any big need to scan the room ahead of time and figure out what things were big enough to hide under if they asked for volunteers. We all know I have a Volunteer problem.......although we were just moved into a new town and no one knew us and before leaving I had promised myself that I would enter a 12 Step Volunteer Program.

There we are filling out paperwork - almost to the end of the meeting and the GS Council coordinator says, "Well the troop leader that has this group has decided she only wants to lead 4th & 5th grade. So in order for this troop to happen we will need parents to lead this group". Immediately I started an inner mantra of "I WILL NOT VOLUNTEER. I WILL NOT VOLUNTEER. I WILL NOT VOLUNTEER." And it worked - some other woman said she would lead it.........only.......I had been listening to that woman through the meeting and knew she was NOT a parent I would want leading my daughter anywhere. She was pretty much Miss Inappropriate Universe winner for the area. I won't even waste time writing out some of the things she talked about - just know they were no empowering to little girls in anyway. Then the GS Council person said "Great"........then I raised my hand and said I would "co" to keep things empowered for young girls. Fortunately the leader was not only not appropriate - she also wasn't committed or reliable. By the time the meeting ended she had quit as leader (no I didn't do anything) - but that also meant that I was the leader. I did have a "co" though - she was coming from the older girls troop with her 3rd grader. I figured "how hard can GS's be?"

Little did I know that my "co" leader would become a great friend and I would end up leading a 3 level Girl Scout troop and coordinating our school and becoming friends with many of the parents in the troop - taking girls on trips out of town - camping - scraping outdoor potties and then painting them - selling 1,000's of boxes of cookies with my daughter - watching her earn awards - becoming close with the woman in the Council office - taking on being the Service Project coordinator for the entire council area - and really really loving it!!!

This year was our 3rd Bridging Ceremony. The first year we had 3rd grade and the other troop which covered 4th & 5th. Maybe we had 50/60 people attending. It was modest, but it was fun.

The next year we added the 1st grade Daisies troop. We bumped the number up a bit and also added in the girls entertaining the group with songs and doing the Flag Ceremony.

This year our Bridging Ceremony spanned all grade - K Daisies, 1st Grd Daisies, 2nd Grd Brownies, 3rd Grd Brownies, 4th Grd Jr., 5th Grd Jr. & 6th Grd. Cadettes. It was awesome!! We had the room filled and we actually ran out of cake!! I love that my daughter is part of a community of girls that work hard for the community and accept one another for who they are - goof balls to the end really!! I also love that I can walk through the halls at school and say, "There goes one of my GS's" and on occassion have them call my name and run up and hug me.........Girl Scouts are awesome!!

This cake was half Chocolate and half White - Vanilla Buttercream icing with all deco's in Vanilla Buttercream. Fun to make - Fun to serve!

Wedding Shower Cookie + Cupcake = YUM

Short, but sweet. I think I posted these cookies on facebook. In fact I am pretty certain I did. Funny how things work...........I had a rash of sugar cookie requests for awhile and then - nothing. After the original request for Palm Trees I bought a few fun cookie cutters that I thought might come in handy. Then I was looking for things to do with the cookies - so I started sticking them on things I was giving to people.

These went on a little box of cupcakes I gave to a friend who had just gotten engaged. Sweet!

Cupcakes were White cake and Chocolate cake with a pretty Vanilla Buttercream swirl on top.

Girl Scout Bridging Time........

Seems like lately I have been getting the option of making cakes with buttercream again. Nice and fun and honestly ....... a bit less stressful. Although both mediums are a hoot.

This cake had an added element of fun. My friend, Julie, asked me to do the cake - but then she added in that she also wanted to watch me do the cake.........which I will be honest about made me a bit nervous to have someone intentionally watching me do a cake. My kids - yes. My mom - yes. My mother-in-law - yes. Hubby - yes. Anyway - the point is that no one has ever really stood and watched. But it was someone who wouldn't make fun of me and someone to talk to that wasn't 11 and under - so bonus right?

Julie came over and the cake decorating began. She was such a cool cheerleader to have!! And then even better..........she wanted to try it out. So this went from my doing a cake for her and her watching to HER doing the cake too!! She helped with most of the center art. I started it and she said I was making it look so easy (which it is) that she wanted to try - so she did. And she seemed tickled that it really was easy. See if you can draw.......then you can draw with any medium - icing is just another type of pencil and cake is just another type of canvas.

In fact - Julie also did all the names of her Girl Scout troop. And then the next week she made a cake for a little girl who is very special to her (and I was jealous because I love the spunky little Bailey and had secretly hoped to make a cake for her) - but Julie's cake was dead on fabulous Rapunzel!!

So maybe some day Julie and I can start a business?

This cake was half Chocolate and half White. Vanilla buttercream for the icing AND for the decorations! Great job Miss Julie!!

Lemon Drop Cupcake

Short post.........but worth the suggestion. Lemon cupcakes with a Lemon buttercream icing. Ummmm yummmmmm..........

Want the recipe just email me. These are tart, but sweet. Making them is nice because you squeeze all the lemons and the kitchen smells FABULOUS!! Of course these are good without the lemon in the buttercream - tastes like a lemon push up.

A Cake for Catherine

If you have followed this blog since I decided to switch from hand crafted cards and move into posting my cake hobby.......then you know that my friend Catherine has had a lot to do with my getting over being nervous about doing cakes for friends and friends of friends. See to date EVERY cake that I have on this blog is made for either a family member, friend or someone in a committee I volunteer in (which broadens the scope of possibilty for knowing people by a trillion!) I know directly ........ or ........ a friend of a friend or family member. Someone recently said, "There is no way you know that many people." to which I responded in my childrens fashion, "Way."

So Catherine has helped me get over my fear of cake making failure and just embrace the fun that is creating. Catherine and her family (and other friends close by) often are also the guinea pigs that taste the flavor combo's I put together. One of the cupcakes became Catherine's always hoping I have extra for favorite - white cake - chocolate ganache filling - peanut butter buttercream icing. So for her birthday she asked for 2 dozen. I asked if she was taking them to work to share. She said "no", but that she thought asking for only 1 dozen was not enough to make it worth my making. I suggested we grow the cupcake up and turn it into a cake - she giggle with glee. And so it was.

Only she didn't give me deco instructions and I knew she did not want her cake covered in fondant. So I looked at the cake and decided to go another route. Just swirlies. But as I made the swirlies Andersen came by and started turning the swirlies into "objects" like you would a passing cloud. Which gave me the idea to incorporate a few things that are nearest and dearest to Catherine's heart - her family.

See the C and the T? Catherine + Tim =

See the N? Nicholas.

See the M? Muriel.

All the things that Catherine loves most about her life.........course there are parents and sisters and neices and nephews and all those grands and such - but I didn't have their initials........although that is a cute idea for a future cake.

Happy Birthday Miss Catherine!!

This cake was as mentioned - White cake - Chocolate Ganache filling - Peanut Butter icing. Yummy!

Batman........Make Your Own Template

There are SO MANY totally cool tools out there to use on the market in order to make MILLIONS of neat designs on cakes!! Believe me.........I search them for fun in my spare time and think.........wow that would be cool to have. Save it to Favorites on my computer (which drives Dave mad because I have a never ending list if you click "favorites" on my page on the computer - but I can find everything in a heartbeat so it works for me).

A few months ago I bought a Cricut for fondant. Also very cool. Used it 1x. Probably I will use it again - eventually - hopefully! because the dang thing was $100 (I used Christmas money that I had sitting around for those of you who know I am too cheap to splurge on things - and a 50% off sale - bonus right?). So anyway - the box ......... and tons of blogs ......... said that I could use it to make every design possible - which may be true - however, you have to buy a million cartridges to do this - which my friend, Julie, apparently has - but who preplans this stuff? Oh yeah, me. I do preplan, but I don't gather all the materials needed in time all the time.

Plus - honestly - making my own template free of charge is often Quicker - Easier - and more Accurate as to what I am looking to make. CASE IN POINT - This Batman Cake -

All I wanted to do was a simple Batman Logo. So like any techie I searched it. Then I copied the picture and pasted it into a Publisher document. Easy enough right?
Then I baked a cake (okay you caught me - the cake was baked already - and cooled - and iced - and I had already placed a beautiful topper of fondant over it). Ready to be CREATED into something...........

I printed my Batman Logo out. If I were doing buttercream then I would have kept the logo close to the cake as I freehand drew it onto the cake in buttercream icing. Hard to do, but doable.

However, for this cake I was going the mildly easier route and using fondant. So I used this template in STEPS.

Step 1 - cut the template out around the larger black oval - toss white paper into recycling and then place on black fondant and cut around the oval.

Step 2 - remove the same template off the fondant and then cut the template around the yellow oval - toss black trim paper into recycling and then place on yellow fondant and cut around the oval.

Step 3 - remove the same template (are you getting the hang of this?) off the fondant and then cut the bat template out of - toss the yellow trim paper into recycling and then place on black fondant and cut around the bat.

Step 4 - Assemble all those pieces on top of one another in the center of the top of the cake.

Voila!! Easy - AND - Free.

Then I added the birthday message and did something cute, easy & similar to the sides of the cake..........

I rolled more black fondant out and cut it into different shapes - squares, rectangles, points, and placed them along the sides to look a bit like a city landscape. Used some yellow royal icing (dries faster then buttercream) and dotted the city to look as those it were "awake" with lights.

Tah Dah!! See...............the tools you use decorating a cake do not have to include $100 (with Christmas money and a 50% off sale) cutting devices. It can just be your IMAGINATION and INGENUITY and you are golden........

This cake was Chocolate Chocolate Chip with Vanilla Buttercream and Vanilla Fondant - plus a little Royal Icing for deco. Well received and big applause from the friends who ate it!