Raspberry Coconut Cakes

I have a new favorite cupcake! I made the cakes with shredded coconut, sour cream and frozen raspberrys in the batter. Then I topped it with a cream cheese frosting with some coconut extract. My frosting was a little more watery than I wanted, but it worked b/c I just dipped the cakes in the frosting. I baked some flaked coconut to stick on the outside and garnished with fresh halved raspberries on top. Yummmm. And NO I didn't think of it on my own. I got this recipie from a book appropriately titled Cupcakes.

Snowmen and Trees

We are having a potluck at work today so I had another excuse to make cupcakes! I got this idea from my Hello, Cupcake book. I tried a new recipie for the big cupcakes and made devil's food cake. Before I put them in the oven I put a Milky Way bar in the center. What the recipie fails to mention is that if you push the Milky Way bar all the way down it melts and kind of burns on the bottom. So if you try it, make sure to only push it in a little and the rest of it will rise up around it. The smaller cupcakes are just regular yellow cake. The tie and scarfs and ear muff band is made out of Starbursts that I rolled out and the sides of the ear muffs are M&M's. I gotta get back to work now, but look for a new post coming soon for Christmas!

Banana Caramel Cakes

This one was fun. Messy, but fun. I got this recipe out of Pamela Clark's book Cupcakes. It is basically banana bread baked in a cupcake then cut horizontally into three pieces. Then in the two little windows you put caramel sauce and sliced bananas. I topped it with some whipped heavy cream with folded-in caramel sauce and those are supposed to be little curls of chocolate but they more look like crumbs to me. You really need a fork to eat them but they are actually pretty tasty!

Nascar Cake

My friends sisters son turned 1 year old a couple of days ago and I thought I'd mix it up a bit and make a cake. I tried out one of the Wilton's baking pans already shaped like this car and copied their color scheme because I have no creativity. All I did was follow the directions that came with the pan and this is how it came out. I tried making the Wilton's buttercream frosting and it did not taste that great though. Very sugary and I will not be making that again.

Thanksgiving Cupcakes

I made these for Thanksgiving this year and used them as place settings. I used gingersnaps for the fan with candy corn suck on their with icing and used some cut up marshmellows to keep them sticking up. The eyes I just made out of frosting and I put some fruit roll ups over the beak. Pretty fun and easy to make and way cute!

Dragon Cupcakes

I asked Lexie what theme cupcakes she wanted for her birthday and she said "dragon". I searched the internet for pictures of dragons and ideas of how to make them into cupcakes and my favorite site I ran across was Cupcake Ninja I have a new favorite source for ideas! My ultimate goal is to not have to steal other people's concepts, but I believe that, in time, I'll get there. :-) These cupcakes were quick and super easy. I just used the three tips she recommended and free-handed it. Not a whole lot to explain. I like the concept though and I think I'll be making more animals out of frosting like this. It is a whole lot easier to work with than chocolate and much cheaper than going out and buying weird candies and cookies and twinkies like you need for a lot of the Hello, Cupcake cupcakes. I did get a new cake book in the mail, so my next creation will probably have some chocolate candies in it.

Pumpkin Cupcakes

I made these cupcakes for my pumpkin carving party tomorrow. (Or maybe I am having the pumpkin carving party so I have a good excuse to make pumpkin cupcakes?) Either way, I am so happy with the way they turned out.

I have never put a huge emphasis on how my cupcakes taste before. They usually just taste like cupcakes. But this time, I made "pumpkin spice" cupcakes with real pumpkin and, you guessed it, pumpkin spice. I LOVE the way these taste! I think they are my favorite tasting cupcakes of all time.

I first saw the idea for this design in my Hello, Cupcake book that I'm obsessed with, and then I saw the same cupcakes on the cover of Family Circle magazine, only they used pretzels instead of green Twizzlers for the stems. I like the Hello, Cupcake ones better, but I did end up buying the magazine and getting this great recipe for a pumpkin pie. I made the first half of it tonight, so I'll put up a blog tomorrow when it's done and I have some pictures.

These cupcakes were the easiest so far to make. You just put on the frosting, roll it around in some orange sugar, make some indentions with a toothpick, pipe some lines in the indentation and stick on your stem. If I could go back and change one thing, I would have made less cupcakes with the batter and filled the cups closer to the top to get more of a rounded shape. I did my best to make it rounded with the frosting, but it's not quite the same.

Yorkie Birthday Cupcakes

I spent the day baking again. I gave Chris my Hello Cupcake book to pick out what cupcakes he wanted for his birthday and these were them. They are actually much easier to make than they look. The hardest part for me was the frosting and food coloring mess that I made. I still have a line of black dye on my right arm. I hope I can get if off before work tomorrow!

So basically I made regular cupcakes and mini cupcakes. I started with a mini cupcake to make a head. For the ears and snout you need 2 mini marshmellows. You cut one in half and dip the exposed part in pink sugar and stick those on as ears using some frosting as glue. You diagonally cut the end off of the other marshmellow and stick it a little lower than center with the pointy side out. Then the fun part is making some different colors. I used white frosting and chocolate frosting and some black, brown and yellow food coloring. For the multicolored look, I put 2 different colors in one bag. I found that it was hard to get both colors in the corner and after I was about halfway through it started turning out the way I wanted. I cut an M shape into my ziplock bag and then made the fur.

Next you just put some fur on the big cupcake and stick the little one on top. Pretty easy!

Boobie Cakes

So I started my new job at CDW on Monday and already I am learning a ton in training. I have a great feeling about the company and what they stand for. They even give one paid day a year for each employee to do community service! Another thing they are doing on Friday is a bake sale to raise money for breast cancer awareness. You know me, I just can't help myself when it comes to a reason to bake. And for charity, even better! Since they are letting us work from home Friday and Monday (yeah, they rock that much), I baked the cupcakes tonight to bring into work with me tomorrow.

I did strawberry cupcakes (because they are pink, duh), and frosted them with white frosting out of a pastry bag piled up like soft serve. Then I took a can of spray paint that is made for cake decorating and sprayed side-ways onto the cupcakes to define all the cool lines I made. I learned very quickly to put them on wax paper and pull up on the opposite side of where I was spraying to creat a sheild. This keeps me from painting the rest of my kitchen pink.

I needed ribbons to complete my theme so I made sugar cookies. This took some trial and error because I had no cookie cutters, I couldnt FIND a ribbon cookie cutter anywhere. Finally I ended up rolling up tiny peices of dough like a snake and just folding it over like a ribbon and flattening it out on the cookie sheet. Then I decorated with pink strawberry frosting, added some pink sugar crystals and outlined it with more pink frosting. Looking back, I think my outline should have been a darker pink and the sugar crystals should have been finer.

After everything was said and done, not counting shopping for the ingredients I spent 3 hours doing this! Like I said, I was trying out new things and working my technique but holy crap that's a long time. It went by pretty quickly though because I was listening to the final presidential debate in the background and looking up occasionally. Maybe I was a little distracted. I won't get too into it though, another time, another blog.

Actually I REALLY wanted to make little cupcake boobies because how perfect would that be? But after watching the sexual harrassment video and learning how we are supposed to be "professional" and "grown-ups" I figured it may be innappropriate and give a bad first impression. But maybe next year...

Waltzing Cupcakes

Life's a Beach!

Amber's birthday was a few days ago so I had Lisa and Stephanie come over to help me decorate beach-themed cupcakes. I made the sharks out of twinkies and the lifesavers out of powdered doughnuts. Both were dipped in microwaved frosting to get that smooth look. I wish I could say I was creative enough to think it up myself but I have to give credit to my new best friend, my "Hello, Cupcake" book. Check out their website at www.hellocupcakebook.com Other than that we used crushed graham crackers for the sand and the little sandals Stephanie made out of licorice candies. I was going to put umbrellas in there too, but I couldnt find them at the store.