Cars and tractors - oh my!

Right before Thanksgiving I got a call asking if I could make birthday cupcakes for a little boy who was turning one!  The family was celebrating twice, once with each side of the family so they needed two different orders: first one with cars and happy birthday picks, and the second with tractors!

 

Cars made out of gum paste and fondant:

 

 

 The tractors were also made out of gum paste and fondant.

First Wedding!

  Two weeks ago I had my first order for wedding cupcakes - talk about exciting!  The bride and groom selected six different flavors: white with chocolate frosting, chocolate with chocolate as well as vanilla frosting, red velvet with cream cheese, strawberry with cotton candy and finally black bottom with caramel.

My red velvet batter was a little thicker then I had first thought...it broke my spatula!

Switched to a heavy-duty spatula and then everything was alright!

  

The display:

  I ran into the newly weds this past weekend and was told they were a huge hit! All in all, I'd say that everything turned out well!

The long lost blogger!

Here is a recap of the past few months.

October:

This past weekend I was part of a bridal expo - I also finally got the chance to put my Kitchen-Aid to the test by making a quadruple batch of frosting (16 cups of powdered sugar were added to it) and I'm thankful to report that it passed the test with flying colors! Unfortunately, my estimate of how much frosting I would need was off and I ended up making another double batch - thankfully that was enough because I was completely out of powdered sugar and butter!  I went with strawberry, chocolate and vanilla cupcakes, each was adorned with either a blue gum paste flower or edible pearls.

I'm not a huge fan of how a cupcake tier looks with just cupcakes on the top, so I made a 6" rice krispie cake (since no one would be eating it, why make a whole cake?) and covered it with fondant, flowers, a black ribbon  and a flower bouquet clip - to be fair, my mom did the flowers and the ribbon, I did the cake and fondant.

I think the display turned out beautifully!  We put Christmas lights in the middle and underneath to add some extra light and sparkle.

  

Within an hour and fifteen minutes of the expo opening I was completely out of cupcakes - I guess 96 was not enough!  It turned out to be okay, we just took the tier down and put the left over cupcake on the table with some flavor/pricing lists and business cards

Now to recoup for a few days, this upcoming weekend I've got an order for a wedding!

September:
I was shooting weddings every weekend (with LDG Photos), and I was also the maid of honor for my dearest friend's wedding.  I did find some time between weddings however to experiment/perfect a few new(ish) recipes and also experimented with gum paste flowers for the first time.

The beautiful bride

Strawberry cupcakes

Chocolate cupcake w/peanut buttercream

August:

The busy season started!  I was working with LDG Photos as a second shooter and we had weddings almost every weekend.  The weekends we weren't shooting weddings, there was still something related to them going on, such as my best friends bridal shower that I had the privilege of providing cupcakes for.  The bridal shower's theme was an old English tea party, and as I was looking through a recipe book I had there was an idea to use styrofoam and moss to create a cupcake stand - it turned out great!

The cupcake display

A close up

This was such a beautiful cake stand that matched the theme!

It's Gardening Time!

  I recently got a phone call from someone asking for birthday cupcakes with a garden theme.  Yes!  Hello imagination, it's time to get to work!  I made some fondant carrots, peas and corn in advance so that they would dry out and be easier to work with.

I made vegan chocolate cupcakes, loaded them with vanilla buttercream frosting, and then rolled them in crushed oreo's to give the cupcakes the look of dirt (because obviously veggies don't grow out of white frosting).

I used graham crackers cut into fourths for the little "seed packet" signs, and covered them each with white almond bark and allowed that to set in the freezer for a few minutes.  Next I flipped the little signs over and placed a small dot of almond bark on the backs and stuck pretzels on as a type of post - the almond bark worked excellent as a "glue".  They also make edible markers (Betty Crocker and Wilton both make them) that you can use to write on frostings, which worked much better then trying to pipe out the letters in frosting.

  I was pretty happy with the way that they turned out - you didn't look at them and have to try and figure out what the vegetables were supposed to be, and that is always a good thing.

Something Magical.

Something magical happened this weekend (and I'm not just talking about the opening of Harry Potter), but I'm going to try and contain my excitement until the end of this post, because there were a few other things I wanted to talk about!

Last Sunday I decided it was time.  It was time to venture to the farmer's market and try and sell some cupcakes! I had everything needed: little cellophane bags, some cute ribbon, my ingredient labels were made up and all I needed to do was bake and get them all packaged up! Simple, right? Not so much.

 Party Time & Cafe Mocha

So Monday I woke up and decided to go with Cafe Mocha and a Party Time cupcakes, baked them, frosted them and I enjoyed it, just like normal. Then I looked at the clock and realized that they needed to be put in the cellophane - which took way longer then expected (go figure, hey?).  I decided to get these packages because they were fairly inexpensive and I didn't want to buy individual cupcake boxes in bulk quite yet, but now I know exactly why you spend a little bit more and get them.  It was a mess. Seriously. You had to carefully put these cupcakes with still-soft frosting into these bags without touch the sides, and then put a label on the ribbon and tie the tops of the bags closed.  Disastrous. You live and learn though, and on that day I definitely learned something.

I finally made it down to the market and got everything set up - it was the first time I had attempted something like this, so my display wasn't super fancy or anything, but it worked for me!

 I know it took a lot of work, but I still thought that the cellophane bags looked cute and my labels turned out just perfect!  Overall, the turnout at the farmer's market wasn't quite what I was hoping it would be. To be fair though, hardly any vendors have vegetables to bring yet, so it was a little slow. That isn't something you can get discouraged about though, you just have to keep your chin up and try again, and that's exactly what I plan to do!

Alright, now that I have kept you in suspense for way too long let me tell you my oh-so-exciting news...................

 I GOT A KITCHEN AID STAND MIXER! 

Ahh!  

I have only wanted one of these for...well...forever basically.  I did some research, figured out which model would be the best one for me and my cupcake needs and I had some discounts along with a $50 rebate and got a spectacular deal on it!  It's still so new that this morning when I walked into the kitchen I was a little surprised to see this bright, red, shiny thing of beauty sitting on my counter.  Of course when I got it home last night I ripped it open, read through the manual super fast, washed the bowl out in record speed and set to making some frosting. Wow. I was amazed.  Now that I have been raving about it and it's wonderful-ness I feel the need to go publish this immediately so I can go bake something else!

4th of July

You are probably expecting to see a post along the lines of red, white and blue, or stars and fireworks, or maybe even something with strawberries and blueberries - that's not what you'll find in this post though, sorry to disappoint.

Life around here has been a little bit crazy around here, so this past weekend I decided it was time to try out a few ideas I've had floating around in my brain for awhile now.  A few weeks ago I took a trip to Lansing and on the way home ran across a small cake supply store, it was located in a small town right on their quant little main street.  Needless to say I completely lost track of time!  I stocked up on some adorable cupcake liners, some powdered fondant (I've been wanting to try some new kinds, so I was happy with that find), and I also found some flavoring oils that I thought would be great to try out!

So, Saturday afternoon I whipped out the mixer and powdered sugar and decided it was time to test out some new flavors of frosting

As you can tell, these were the flavors I tested out.  I combined the rum and coconut to created a delicious coconut rum buttercream that gave me a great idea for another cupcake I can't wait to try out!  The lemon was pretty decent (my dad was a big fan of that one), the cotton candy was surprisingly amazing and the bubble gum...well...kids might really enjoy it, but not me.

I didn't want to spend my time in the kitchen working on mixing up a cake, so I cheated and just used a box that made 12 cupcakes

So, I made 12 mini cupcakes and added some of my new frostings to them to have a taste testing party, some were good and worked...while others didn't.  But you live & learn.

Bubble Gum (least favorite):

 Lemon (this one came in 2nd for me):

Cotton Candy (tied for 1st):

Coconut Rum (also tied for 1st):

I think that the cotton candy and coconut rum are both very delicious, but they would be even better on a different kind of cake, as these were just plain white.

My dog also had a birthday this weekend and he turned 2! Yay!  He absolutely loves cupcakes, if he weighed more than 10 pounds he might try to attack and take you down in order to get a cupcake from you. Seriously.  So, for his birthday we decided to give him his own little mini cupcake!  He wasn't quite sure what to do when we gave him permission to actually eat it! Too funny!

Hope everyone had a safe & enjoyable 4th of July weekend!

Cupcakes and knitting - oh my!

  It's been awhile since I have had anything of interest to blog about, but that all changed Saturday afternoon when I got a phone calling asking for two dozen cupcakes for the following day.  My heart did that sort of pitter-patter it does whenever I'm faced with the opportunity to bake and decorate cupcakes, my imagination suddenly shot into overdrive thinking of all of the cake and frosting flavors I could combine! Vanilla with chocolate.  Chocolate with vanilla. Chocolate with chocolate. Vanilla with vanilla. Boston creme. Chocolate chip with peanut butter. Red velvet with cream cheese. Coconut with espresso! Oh the possibilities!
  I brought myself back down to earth and started to think (instead of daydream), these precious cupcakes were headed to a family with small children - better keep it pretty simple.  I finally settled with making one dozen chocolate chip cupcakes with chocolate frosting, one dozen chocolate chip mini cupcakes with vanilla buttercream and one dozen vegan chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream.  I figured that since the family has a little girl of about 3, sprinkles would be the perfect touch.

Chocolate chip with chocolate buttercream

Mini chocolate chip with vanilla buttercream

Vegan chocolate with vanilla buttercream

  This post isn't quite done yet though!  I spent a few hours last week searching through Ravelry (which happens to be one of my personal favorite websites) for a new knitting pattern when I stumbled across this adorable slouchy hat pattern.  I have been working mainly on socks lately and I wanted to start a new, fast, easy project - and this was it!  I grabbed my size 10 DBNs, a ball of purple yarn and set to work.  Two days later I had this adorable slouchy hat and was impressed with how fast it went.