NEW FAVORITE CUPCAKES

Chocolate fudge cupcakes with peanut butter buttercream=Ah-mazing!!

These combine two of my favorite flavors, and turn out very moist. I have a new technique Ive tried out to make a cupcake that is more moist than I've ever been able to make before.....but if I wrote it down here, it wouldnt be a secret, and wouldnt make my cupcakes uniquely moist, now would it! :)

Below are some baby shower cupcakes using my new favorite flavor combo. They were light blue with chocolate safety pins, rattles, rocking horses, and baby bottles. CUTE!

Business Card Holder

$2.00!

Cute!

Sk8r cake

This cake and cupcake set was really fun to make, it was for a 13 year old boys birthday party. He loves skateboarding and was getting a skateboard for his birthday so I had his mom forward me the picture of what she bought so that I could make the cupcakes match, and then be displayed with, his birthday skateboard! I did a fondant covered cake and 24 cupcakes.

The toppers where white chocolate skulls and Tech Deck skateboards.

Wedding cake

This was it! 150 cupcakes and a wedding cake. My proudest accomplishment. Professional photos were taken and will be up shortly, but for now, check these out to tide you over.

Also, these were featured on a website, http://www.munchkincakes.com/ . Check them out!

The butterflies were my favorite part.

*Photos courtesy of Betsy Wiederstein

Pumpkin cupcakes

Do you ever have those life-altering moments when you go from hating something to absolutely loving it??

Like, you've hated peas your whole life, and one day, you wake up and cant get enough. Well, my friends, pumpkins are my peas. I am not a fan of pumpkin pie, pumpkin scents, pumpkin ANYTHING.

And yet, one day, on a whim, I decided to try some pumpkin cupcakes. They turned out SO dense and moist, I will NEVER use another recipe. Its weird and dumb luck that I've found the perfect recipe on the first try and that now, all of a sudden, I have pumpkin fever. In the months since I've made these, I've got pumpkin flavored febreeze, candles, body wash, cant go more than a week without Panera's pumpkin spice latte of Culver's pumpkin pie cheesecake "mixer", and have plans for an elaborate caramel pecan pumpkin cheesecake for Thanksgiving!

These guys were topped with my new favorite piping technique (super cute and completely effortless) with honey almond buttercream and almonds for garnish.

Princess Birthday

These were the cupcakes I made for my little sister's birthday party. They are vanilla bean cupcakes with real madagascar vanilla bean buttercream and if you LOVE vanilla bean as much as I do, these cupcakes are HEAVEN!

The crown-topped "C" in the middle is for Chelsey, the guest of honor!

Close-up of the cupcakes. The lace print liners were my favorite.



Harley Davidson Cake

This had me up literally ALL night creating. I made this Harley cake for Kevin's best friend Casey's surprise birthday. We house-sat at their house the night prior to the party, so I had to use the tools at my disposal in THEIR kitchen to make this....definitely a challenge,but it made me that much more proud of the finished product! The flames are my favorite part of this cake.

**Originals below**



OREOOOOOOOO!

THESE have me very excited. I did these for a little boy's Birthday Party. They have an oreo on the bottom, then chocolate oreo cupcakes, oreo buttercream, and an oreo truffle topper.

These turned out so moist and tasty, and you DEFINITELY need a glass of milk handy when you eat one of these boys!

I would like to try different flavors of oreos with this same cupcake concept: strawberry milkshake, mint, peanut butter, golden oreos, the blue summer-time oreos, banana-split oreos....ok, I'll stop.

..And on to the picture!

4th of July Topiaries

I am such a glutten for punishment...After my 18 Mother's Day topiaries I swore up and down my cupcake topiary days had come and gone. So I have absolutely NO explanation as to why, a mere 2 months later, I INVITED more of this punishment.

I did 2 topiaries and surprisingly, they worked amazingly! I learned from my mistakes and trials/errors from the Mother's Day bunch, was able to charge more, actually make a profit, and had FUN doing these.

Check out both sets below!

"A Bun in the Oven"

I did this order for a baby shower, themed "A Bun in the Oven". I made the oven out of a carboard bankers box, spray paint, some condiment cups, old CD's, and a sheet protector. I would LOVE to do more of these in different color schemes, this was SUCH a fun project!!

The cupcakes were cinnamon bun flavored cake with cinnamon cream cheese buttercream (Duh!). I topped them with mini-cinnamon rolls made from fondant.

~~Final Product~~

The Birth of the Cupcake jar

I used my Father's Day displays to try out my first trails of cupcake jars, and they turned out JUST like I imagined. I would like to start experimenting a lot more with these next summer and plan to sell them at the farmer's market.

~~Enjoy!~~

Father's Day Cupcakes

After this "pre-lim" version, I added blue and yellow chocolate abstract hearts to the next batch. The Pappa's LOVED these!

****Un-edited pics****

Visions of Farmers markets spinning in my head

It's been less than a year since my self-taught, trail-and-error cupcake hobby/business was born...I NEVER thought I would be where Im at with this already and Im SO excited for what the future brings. Ive found myself not being able to stop for one second thinking about the farmers market next year and MAKING THIS HAPPEN for myself....In an earlier post I was talking about getting some shallow "tubs" to store my cupcake's in a jar in during those hot and humid Iowa farmers markets....well, I FOUND IT!!!! it's about $250.00, but it is TOO cute not to get...Using this as an "ice tub" and placing my cupcake jars on top is going to FOR SURE be an eye catcher! I still want to use something different for the cupcake kabobs (maybe), still looking around...Maybe an OVERLY large novelty "baking pan" that I can fill with ice and then just set my oblong tray over it. Who knows....we've still got time.

Supply Check #2

I got some new liners and such while out shopping for supplies for my upcoming 4th of July cupcake topiary project (no worries, only doing 2 this time, charged enough to cover my costs, and correct my mistakes from last time!!! :)). See them here!

Bridal shower!

Most recently, I just finished up a bridal shower order for some vanilla cupcakes with raspberry buttercream. The wedding colors were hot pink and gold, so I did hot pink icing with big gold sugar crystals.

My piping with this Wilton tip is getting MUCH better/easier/faster, so I was VERY proud of myself. :) :)

Graduation Luau!!

Below are some cupcakes that I did for a graduation party. The party was in a luau theme, so I did key vanilla cupcakes with key lime frosting and dipped them in crushed graham cracker to get the "beach" look, then stuck drink umbrellas in them. I also did "smores" cucpakes the same way, so they all turned out looking the same.

The sheet cake was done by Cindy Hartman, one of my cake-baking peers!

I decorated the cupcake boxes with luau and tiki themed stickers! :)

Something different

Stole these from the Pampered Chef party cookbook I got:

Cupcake kabobs

Here are the little guys I was talking about in my "Mothers Day" post and I am truly exicted about them! The color and flavor options are endless, as well as the other "food accessories" joining the cupcakes on the skewers. These are also super cheap to make, so I figure the best, most cost effective way to sell these would be on an individual basis at the farmers market. Ive just got to figure out how Im going to preserve them in the heat...I may just buy an extra ice tub and sit decorative platters displaying the kabobs on top. This will also allow me to decorate them in MANY different ways. I'd probably charge 2.50 per kabob, which would be a profit of 1.50 per kabob. Im VERY excited for the farmers market next year.

Kevin's Birthday

So for Kevin's birthday, I wanted to do a really special cake. Since I got him a motorcycle helmet as his gift, I thought it fitting to make a motorcycle helmet cake. I looked EVERYWHERE for a motorcycle helmet cake mold and found absolutely nothing. I wanted to make the cake 3d rather than 2d because, well, thats boring...SO....after about 4 anxiety attacks and a lot of lost sleep, I came up with this:

I 100% without a doubt proved to myself that I am NOT cake boss...there's a reason I dont do cake sculpting...because it turns out looking sloppy. this was my absolute best attempt, and even the fondant work wouldnt lay 100% how I wanted it to because its all about the sculpting. It turned out good enough to do the trick though, and Kevin was SUPER happy and thought it looked really impressive. Since he was who the cake was for, thats all the matters.

Now.....back to something I CAN do....cupcakes! :)

MOTHER'S DAY Topiaries

Yes, this blog post is coming a little late, but better late than never. I decided that for Mother's Day, I would take as many orders for these cupcake topiaries as possible, and I ended up with 18 orders. I charged $20 a piece for them and should have charged twice that much with how much everything ended up costing. Also, this was a HUGE mistake on my part to try to take on a task this big with never having attempted one of these before. This took up an entire week of my life, staying up most nights until well after 1am....but, After a few mistakes and "trial run" looking orders, I had some REALLY cute looking topiarys, and I am glad that I will have several "examples" for a website that I hope to build at the beginning of next year. I plan to make a Cupcakes 4.0 website with options for cupcake bouquets, cupcake kabobs (coming shortly), themed cupcakes and cakes, and gourmet cupcakes and cakes (where Ill specialize in flavor and design less than a "theme".)  I also plan to open a booth at the Valley Junction farmers market every Thursday night next year and sell "cupcakes in a jar, adorned with bows and lid stickers, in different themes, ect, as well as cupcake kabobs. To "beat the heat". I will have to buy big shallow tubs for ice to display the jars in, and havent quite figured out how I'll do the cupcake kabobs, but Ive got a whole year to figure it out, right?

Now, for the pictures!!

Bumble-bees!

Full view

Square-topiary. I love the color scheme, but am not a big fan of the "square" look.

Wrapped version. This kept the cupcakes VERY moist. Its just a "large treat bag", cut to fit, and then I tied them up with matching ribbons from the pot.

This was one of 2 of the large foam balls. Ill be going with the smaller ones next time as these make the pot too top-heavy. Ill also need to find something to weight down the pots more, as some had "tipping" problems.

butterflies!

bumble-bees and daffodils

Full view

Garden-theme

Garden-theme 2

My favorite one. too top heavy wiht going all the way around.

wrapped-up