Piano Recital Cupcakes

Okay, so these could have turned out better. It was sort of last minute and it was late! My daughter reminded me about 8:30pm that she wanted cupcakes to take to her piano recital/swim party the next day. I was hoping for something basic but she wanted raspberry lemonade :) Thank goodness for being stocked up at home, right :) I should have just done something like royal icing flowers but I wanted to play with my fondant! You live, you learn! I guess they were only for a bunch of kids so they didn't really care. A cupcake is a cupcake, right???

Cupcake Cakes

I was looking through some of my pictures and realized I had not posted these cakes.

This is a picture of a cake I did for my cousin's twins 1st Birthday. She has a boy and a girl and did a cupcake theme. I used my 1/2 sheet pan and basically quadrupled it. I did two cakes side by side, and they were each double thick. Total this cake was 11 cake mixes!!! It weighed a ton. Obviously that much cake required a pretty sturdy board underneath. Dad to the rescue :) He had a shelf made out of 1" thick solid wood so we used one of the shelves off of it. It worked out perfect. Since it was their first birthday they each needed their own cake to eat, so I made two #1's and decorated them accordingly. That is the smaller cakes you see on the sides of the big cake.

This is a cake I did for my brother-n-law the same weekend as the twins birthday. I used the same cupcake pan I used for the twins. Little bit less intense from the twins cake :)

Brittany's Baby Shower

These are cupcakes I did for a baby shower. The theme was called "King of the Jungle" off of ezpartyzone.com. The products were adorable so I tried to kind of match the cupcake boxes to the theme and cupcakes. I think they turned out cute!!! I originally was going to make the buttercream frosting vanilla flavored and tint it brown, but I decided it would look too much like chocolate buttercream and so when everyone bit into it the flavor would be off because they would expect it to be chocolate. So, I just went with chocolate buttercream.

4th of July Fun Times

I wanted to try out some hamburgers and hot dogs cupcake style and this is what I came up with. I think they turned out so cute!!!

Cub Scout Arrow of Light Ceremony

I was asked by some ladies at church to do a cake for the cub scouts Arrow of Light ceremony. We were going to be out of town on the day of the event so I had to do the cake with 12 hours notice. Wow!!! I was a speedy gonzalez but I think it still turned out okay! The Arrow of Light patch in the middle is made out of fondant, the rest is just buttercream.

Father's Day

I found the cutest idea on Bakerella's Blog!!! I was dying for a reason to make these cute little hamburgers and french fries and my husband provided the perfect excuse, he had to work on Father's Day so I decided to make them to take for all of the other dads who had to work too.

This was quite the task once I got into it. I didn't really think it would be that intensive but there are a lot of little steps. Luckily I only made 14 of them or else I would probably still be here doing it.

I think they turned out adorable and I would definitely make them again, and in fact you could make them for any occasion just by changing the wording!





The first thing I did was make the brownies. So easy, I just used a boxed mix and made it according to the package directions. That was a little weird for me. After they were done I just left them in the pan to cool.



While the brownies were baking I started working on the "french fries". Once again I used Betty Crocker's package mix of sugar cookie dough using the "cookie cut out" variation. A couple of things I learned with this step were that my french fries were too long. I used about half the batch of dough to roll out at a time. I left it fairly thick which turned out good but I left my uncooked french fries about 4" long and they should have been about 2" long. I ended up breaking a bunch of the cooked ones in half so they fit better. When I brought them out of the oven I sprinkled them with sugar while they were still warm and kind of rubbed it in so it looked like salt on french fries then I just left them to cool.



After I made the brownies and cookies I tackled the "paper work". Attached to Bakerella's blog is the pdf files for all of the cute paper goods. This is where I messed up on my timing. I didn't think about the time involved in printing, cutting, folding, and taping all of these together. They turned out soooo cute though that by the end the time was all worth it. I didn't get a picture of the tissue paper that goes in the little tray separately but you can see a picture of it at the top with it all put together. It was so cute. However, another thing I learned was that the paper could also be cut smaller to fit in the trays better.

After I got my paper products all printed and cut out and realized how long I was going to be assembling I started making my cupcakes. That worked out good.



After the paper products were all assembled I set out to make the "hamburgers and french fries". First I made a recipe of butter cream frosting. Bakerella used store bought frosting but I was also decorating some cupcakes so I used buttercream. I tinted a small portion red (ketchup) and yellow (mustard). Then I colored a baggy full of coconut green for my lettuce.



I flipped the whole pan of brownies out onto a tray and used my round cookie cutter to cut out the "patties". Another educating experience, use a bigger pan so the brownies are not so thick. I had to cut my patties in half because they were so tall.

After the cupcakes were cooled I peeled the wrappers off.



Then I cut the cupcakes in half and set the tops off to the side.

Add the "pattie" to the bottom bun.



I left the ketchup and mustard in baggies and snipped off the ends. I squirted it just like I would on a real hamburger making sure to go all the way to the edge so it would be visible. Then I sprinkled the "lettuce" on top.



Apply top bun. I thought they were cute here!


Then I painted on some piping gel and sprinkled sesame seeds and oh my goodness!!! They were soooo cute!!!! My husband came into the kitchen right about this time and he was quite impressed. He had seen all of the parts but he hadn't seen anything put together so he was surprised at how realistic they looked. It made all of the work worth it!


I put the cookies into the fry holders and put them all in their little trays. I thought they turned out so cute!!!

Twilight

My husband found this image online for me and I had to post it on my blog :) Gotta love Twilight and cupcakes :)

Matrix Cake

For Craig's actual birthday cake he wanted a Matrix theme. I searched quite a bit online for some ideas but that is a hard theme to search for. I found a couple of cakes but they mainly had the same thought that I did. I had a new recipe for homemade marshmallow fondant that I really wanted to try so I wanted to find an idea that would allow me to use the fondant. I decided on doing one small cake and some cupcakes to go with it. I think it turned out cute enough, oops, I mean manly enough :) I definitely need to practice more with the fondant, it's been a while since I covered a cake in it, I think a couple more though and I'll be back in the swing of things :)


Here is a picture of the whole thing all put together. The main colors were black with lime green.




On the main layer of the cake I covered it with black fondant and then used piping gel tinted green to write the "code". It actually was a lot faster and easier than I anticipated it.



This is a side view of the cake. I cut his name out green fondant and "glued" it on. Around the side of the cake I continued writing the "code".


These are the cupcakes. I kind of went with a retro theme to them. I thought they looked cute with the cake though.

Fondant Party Hats

I decided to make Craig some cupcakes for his coworkers for his birthday. I wanted to put a fun little topper on them but not make them too feminine. So after looking around for awhile I finally found this fun party hat. After I had them all made I found a really cute 3D one but I still thought these turned out cute.

First I started out with cutting diamond shapes out of my fondant. I actually couldn't find my triangle I wanted to use but I just cut the diamond in half and it turned out fine.



Then I cut little circles out and "glued" them to the fondant triangles. I cut a slightly larger circle for the top of the hat.



Here they are all made.


And here they are stuck in the cupcakes :)

Fondant For Fun

So my friend Carole recently gave me a recipe for marshmallow fondant that I was dying to try. A couple of days ago I made the fondant and I was amazed at the ease in making it. I've tried to stay away from fondant simply because I didn't like using it, but I was amazed at how easy it was to make it. I decided to pull a little of it out today and just play around and see what I could do with it.

Of course the first thing I did was taste it :) Still not my favorite but such a major improvement over the store bought kind!!! Wow!!!

Next, I am attempting my hand at fondant bows. This is a picture of my strips with the ends glued together and turned on their sides to dry. After they have tried I will attempt to put it together and see what I come up with. More pictures on that to follow :)



After I made my bow loops I tried some different cutters I had to find the right one to fit a regular sized cupcake. I think they are cute with the scalloped edges. And of course then it was all about putting colors together and having fun :)

Pirate Cake

This was a pirate cake for a 7 year olds birthday party. I tried to copy the party napkin as much as I could. The cake was decorated entirely in buttercream frosting.

This is my attempt as an artist :) I drew the pattern onto a piece of posterboard and then cut it out. I laid each piece on the frosted cake and traced it with a toothpick. Then I outlined each section in black before I filled anything in.


This is the finished product :) If you'll notice on the napkin the border was red, then blue, then a skinny green so I tried to copy that theme in the borders of the cake making the bottom border a double layer thick of red then blue and the top border a small green shell border.

Graduation Cupcakes

Of course in our school district it is called a "Promotion Ceremony"!!! So I decided to make the ever adorable graduation cap cupcakes for Sari's promotion from 6th grade. I debated on using the peanut butter cup idea or doing it out of fondant, I let Sari make the choice and she went with the peanut butter cups. They were quite easy to make and I think they turned out soooo cute!!!



First I started out with regular chocolate chips and a tad bit of vegetable oil in a bowl. I microwaved it for 15 seconds a time stirring after each time. It only takes about 1 minute total to melt the chocolate. You could also use chocolate candy melts, I just didn't have any on hand at the minute.


Then I took graham crackers and broke them into their 4 individual pieces.



I then cut each individual piece in half, so I ended up with 8 squares out of one graham cracker.



Then I completely immersed each little square in my bowl of melted chocolate. For you vinyl people out there you will notice my tool of choice to fish my graham cracker out of the chocolate :)



Then I complete unwrapped a miniature Reeses Peanut Butter cup and turned it upside on a rack.



I placed the chocolate covered graham cracker on top of the peanut butter cup.

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After I assembled all 30 of them, it only took about 20 minutes to do all of it, I put them in the refrigerator for about an hour to help the chocolate become firm.


During that time I baked my cupcakes and allowed them to cool. When I got ready to frost my cupcakes I pulled the "caps" out and had them ready to be placed on the fresh buttercream frosting. I also sprinkled some colorful balls. After putting them all together I tinted some of the frosting green (school colors) and piped on a tassle! It would have been cuter in fondant for the tassle but I think they still turned out cute.