4th of July Cupcakes

I usually end up making my cupcakes in a hurry but these I probably did in record time. I decided to make them just a couple of hours before I had company over. I went to the store and found some 4th of July wrappers and grabbed m&m's and some licorice really having no idea what I was going to do. From the time I got home until they were completed took me about an hour. I made 2 of what is pictured above for a total of 24 cupcakes, 12 for me and my guests and 12 for my parents and theirs. Once I decided to use the flag as my inspiration it went by very quick!

Operation Cake

I made this cake today for Stephanie's son, Weston's, birthday. Just like most everything else I try to do, this was a little harder than I thought it would be. I used all frosting here. If I had to do it over again, which I doubt I would, I wouldn't do it the same way. Instead of spreading the frosting out, I would put little stars to fill in the spaces like I did on the Nascar cake so it looks more uniform. It was really hard to get the frosting smooth and in all the right places here. But probably the best way to do this cake to make it look good would be with fondant. I have yet to experiment with it but wow would it be so nice to just cut out shapes and lay them on the cake. This one would be really cool because you could just cover it in red frosting, then put the guy right over it with the holes pre-cut out. Everything would be so neat and smooth and perfect... I also didn't do the tweezers. I contemplated it, but I decided to write the happy birthday there instead. ANOTHER thing I learned doing this cake... is the cakeboard. I don't think I will use that again unless I am dealing with white frosting. I made kind of a mess on the board and it doesn't just wipe off like it does with the plastic I normally use. It looks like the poor guy was bleeding all over the place. But in this case I suppose it is kind of fitting seeing how I have been cutting holes into him all day...

Wedding Shower Cupcakes

I made these for my sister's friends wedding shower, which I obviously did not attend, because had I attended, I would have put them on the tier correctly and not ruined all my hard work by putting the cupcakes in the wrong place making it look lopsided and stupid and putting the leaves upside down so you couldn't see the detail. Everyone thinks I am over reacting and it might be the hormones from being 15 weeks pregnant, but if you spent 6 hours putting a lot of detail into decorating something and counting things out and making everything just perfect, someone screwing it all up in 5 minutes... well... it gets to me. Look at the tier. If you have 1 type of a cupcake, you put it on top, 4 cupcakes of a different sort, well that would be on the second tier. 8 of another would be on tier three. It is not rocket science, it is simple logic and NOBODY there thought that maybe this looks a little odd? No, everyone thought it looked great. Imagine what they would have thought had it actually been put together correctly??

Sunflowers

I made these for my Grandmere's birthday last month. Well I made other ones that didn't look as good because, once again, I completely underestimated how time consuming they would be to make and was completely rushed. The petals are hard to do when the icing melts in your hand, so you have to keep putting the icing in the fridge for a little bit and taking it back out.

Snoopy Cupcakes

My mom really likes the Peanut's characters so a few months ago when I found Snoopy cupcake wrappers I had to get them. I made these for her birthday. They aren't incredibly fancy, but I think they turned out kinda cute :-)

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!