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!