1st Anniversary

Instead of baking cupcakes for our first wedding anniversary, I'm going to use this space to reminisce about the wonderful wedding and pre-wedding events we had last year. It's been an amazing year, and I love the life my husband and I have begun together. 

Here are our delicious chocolate raspberry and vanilla butter cream cupcakes for our wedding. These are obviously baked by professionals. There is no way I would ever want to bake for weddings (especially my own)-too much pressure. 

The groom's cupcake cake - a motorcycle on the open road

Here are my work bridal shower cupcakes piled high with delicious butter cream frosting made by my co-worker. They were finished off with beautiful shimmery sprinkles.

These are some of the tastiest cupcakes I've ever eaten. They are delicious red velvet with cream cheese frosting-a perfect combo. My sister made them for my family bridal shower.

More amazing flavors here: Strawberry Daiquiri and Margarita cupcakes. These were made for my cupcake inspired bachelorette party. The theme was "Cupcakes and Cocktails" and my friend planned an amazing event that included all things cupcake inspired from the invitations to the gifts to the pub crawl that kept us out until the wee hours of the morning. 

 

What a year! Happy first anniversary to my amazing husband!

Star Spangled Cake Pops

After learning some cake pop making tips last spring, I was excited to try these American flag cake pops for the Fourth of July. They weren't too difficult to create, but there were a few challenges. First, I couldn't find the right shade of blue chocolate, so I ended up adding oil based food dye to make them a darker blue. Then, I couldn't find white star sprinkles, so I had to intricately pick them out of the mix of red, white, and blue star sprinkles. My biggest challenge was overcoming the thickness of the darker colored melted chocolate. My secret is to add vegetable oil to thin it out. This can cause the chocolate coating to crack when it drys, but only a few of my cake pops were trashed for this reason (and, by trashed, I mean were eaten by my husband and I instead of neatly displayed).  

Happy Fourth of July! 

First Father's Day

As a busy new mom I don't have a lot of extra time to bake cupcakes right now. In fact, I'm lucky to get a shower. Our new addition is super sweet and super time consuming. When I'm not feeding or changing diapers, I'm soaking up as many snuggles as I can get. But, I absolutely had to make time for cupcakes to honor my hubby's first Father's Day. He is an amazing dad, and I'm so glad our son has him as a role model, teacher, and friend. So, in honor of him, I made some manly grilling cupcakes. I honestly can't believe I just used the words "manly" and "cupcakes" in the same sentence. They are made with brownie batter instead of cake batter and are topped with orange and red sprinkles for hot coals. I created a grill grate with black lines of icing and topped them with Hot Tamales for hot dogs. Then, a little more black icing smeared with toothpicks gave the appearance of grill marks on the "hot dogs." Everyone tells me that time flies, so before I know it I'm sure to see my little guy and my big guy out grilling on our deck together. 

Cake Pops!

I FINALLY got some inspiration (and assistance) to create some delicious and presentable cake pops. I took a short evening class to get some tips from an expert who makes cake pops on a regular basis. First, I got some great ideas for flavoring the cake (from various extracts to several different flavored liquors). I also had some help determining the perfect texture and consistency of the cake after it is smashed and mixed with frosting. The biggest tip I got involved using a circular motion to drip of excess chocolate and create a smooth and finished look.

I combined raspberry extract, white cake, vanilla frosting, and pink food coloring to create my first set of cake pops. Then, they were coated in pink melted chocolate and adorned with Eastery sprinkles.

My second set were made with chocolate cake and were coated in purple chocolate. I turned some of these (and some pink ones) into cake truffles (or call them cake balls, if you like). Then, I used a Ziploc bag to pipe some white chocolate stripes on top. Here's the perfect serving container for making some cake shooters:



And, we had enough left-over cake to make more at home. So, I made an Easter cake pop dessert tray:

Sunny Spring

Well, technically it's not spring yet, but it sure feels like spring outside. We've had some beautiful weather lately, and I was inspired to make sunflower cupcakes in honor of my mom's birthday last week. She loves lemon desserts, so I made lemon cupcakes and topped them with lemon cream cheese frosting. I made use of some really great decorating tools that were given to me by a good friend last year at a bridal shower. Three layers of petals made for a realistic look and the center of the sunflower was created with half an Oreo. Bright, happy, and delicious!

Konnichiwa Kitty

I made these cupcakes for a friend's recent birthday party. A group of friends gathered at a local Japanese sushi/karaoke bar for a surprise celebration. The birthday girl's fiance asked me to create some "Hello Kitty" cupcakes for the event, and I was afraid my frustration level would be high if I tried to make the actual cupcake look like the famous pink bowed kitty. So, I opted to use cupcake aprons with a beautiful printed version of the character. I find it difficult to decorate with trademarked characters, because I expect the design to look exactly like the actual image. I can do a generic penguin or a generic dog cupcake, but I was very happy with the aprons that were wrapped around these carrot cake with cream-cheese icing treats. I admit that I ordered them from Etsy.com, but after seeing they were just printed on vellum paper, I figure I could try designing some of my own cupcake aprons in the near future.

Times Square Ball Drop Cupcakes

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1....Happy New Year! It's 2012 and time to start blogging again. My family celebrated New Year's in Florida again this year. Two years ago I made some shark cupcakes for New Year's in Florida, which inspired this entire blog. Even though I didn't have all my baking supplies with me in Florida, I "made do" with an old fashioned muffin tin, spoon, and knife for spreading frosting. After a quick trip to the party store, they were ready to decorate.

I am sad to see that it's been 8 months since I've blogged, but I do have some pretty darn good excuses for my hiatus. Let's just do a quick review of last year's MAJOR events in my life:

January/February: survived a blizzard, continued ELL certification classes at Mizzou every Saturday from 9am-3pm (and did LOTS of homework), wedding planning was in full gear

March/April: spring break in Georgia, met with wedding vendors, finished up more ELL coursework

May/June (here's where it gets really CRAZY): nephew's graduation, bridal shower with coworkers, bachelorette party in Florida, bridal shower in Cape, bachelorette party in Columbia, wedding dance lessons, began 2 online summer classes, and SOLD my condo (therefore became homeless), packed up everything and put it in storage, moved in with a friend, shopped for a house, got our marriage license (on the same day our offer on the house was accepted)

July: rehearsal dinner, wedding, honeymoon in Hawaii, flew back into KC and went to a friend's wedding, returned to Columbia to close on our house, unpacked wedding gifts and storage items

August: continued unpacking and decorating, started a new year of teaching 3rd grade, began my last ELL certification course, and at the very end of August....found out I was PREGGO!

September: went to Vegas for my 30th birthday with the girls (no cocktails for me), Chicago for a wedding, and was sick, sick, sick for most of the month

October: sick

November: sick

December: started feeling better, Christmas with both families, and New Year's in Florida

Whew! As you can see, things really started to slow down by the end of the year. Being sick was the pits, but of course we were still so thankful for and ecstatic about our growing family. It also forced me to stop overbooking myself and allow time for resting. During those months, the thought of sweets (a.k.a. cupcakes) was nauseating. Hard to believe, but I just didn't want to come near my new Kitchen-aid mixer. It was sad, because I have LOTS of new cupcake tools from the wedding/showers. I knew that I'd start feeling better eventually, and I'm already back in the kitchen in 2012. So, I raise a glass to the New Year (filled with sparkling grape juice, of course) with many hopes of using all my new cupcake items to bake, create, and blog. After all, I'll have kid birthday parties to bake for now. And, with my new obsession of Pinterest, the ideas are endless!