Cute as a Button

Finley's "Cute as a Button" smash cake and cupcakes.

Cupcakes in a Jar

I've seen these cupcakes-in-a-jar on a few websites, but when I saw these ones a while back I completely fell in love with the idea and planned to make them for my fellow teachers for Teacher Appreciation Week. As it turns out, I didn't end up having enough time to make them.


So I made them this week instead! Jonathan and Carolyn had a "Meet the Baby" party for their little Kaleia, so I made some cupcakes-in-a-jar to take with me! I think they look much cuter in the taller jars from my inspiration, but I would need to put two cupcakes in each jar, and that just seemed like a lot of cake for somebody to eat in one sitting. So I opted for shorter jars. I think my favorite thing about these were how well they traveled, so much easier to transport than actual cupcakes!
 

Cinco de Mayo, Anyone?

I started following RecipeGirl a while ago on fb because she had a lot of kid-friendly recipes. A few days ago I saw her recipe for Margarita Cupcakes and decided I had to try them. No, they're not exactly friendly to my diet, and no, I don't celebrate Cinco de Mayo. But I like to find any excuse for a margarita. Cinco de Mayo sounds like a good excuse to me!

Her recipe yields 24 cupcakes, but I did away with a few of those and made some minis, well, just because. I love mini cupcakes!

Ingredients:

CAKE:
9 ounces Margarita Mixer, bottled liquid
3 ounces tequila
3/4 ounce Grand Marnier - I used Triple Sec because that's what we had in the bar
1 (18.25 ounce) box white cake mix
3 large egg whites
2 Tablespoons canola oil
1 Tablespoon lime zest


LIME BUTTERCREAM ICING:
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
5 to 6 cups powdered sugar
2 Tablespoons lime juice, freshly squeezed
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon lime zest
green food coloring, if desired
small lime slices for garnish, if desired


Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line two dozen cupcake tins with paper liners.

2. Prepare cupcakes: Whisk together margarita mix, tequila and Grand Marnier in a small bowl. Measure out 1 1/4 cups for the recipe; pour the rest on some ice and drink it while making the cupcakes :)

3. In a large bowl, blend cake mix, egg whites, vegetable oil, lime zest and 1 1/4 cups of the margarita mix from step 1. Blend on low for about 30 seconds and then increase speed to medium and blend for two additional minutes. Batter will be slightly lumpy.

4. Spoon the batter into cupcake liners (about 3/4 full). Bake for 20-25 min, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Let cupcakes cool for about 10 minutes in the pans, then remove them to a rack to cool completely.

5. Prepare icing: Once cucpakes are completely cooled, prepare the icing. Place butter in a large bowl and beat with electric mixer until butter is fluffy. Add 5 cups of powdered sugar, salt, lime juice, and lime zest. Mix until thick and creamy. Add more powdered sugar until the frosting is of a good spreading (or piping) consistency. Mix in a tiny amount of green food coloring or gel paste if you'd like the frosting to have a green tint. Ice cupcakes in whatever manner you prefer... spreading or piping the frosting. Use small lime slices as garnish.

Braysen's Pirate Party

Because I have SO MANY pictures from Braysen's 1st birthday party, I decided to put the goodies on my cake blog. More pictures from the party can be found here, and there are many more on facebook.

A ton of stuff, right? I know! I have a serious problem when it comes to ideas for goodies. I get so many ideas and want to all of them. I really have a hard time eliminating things, so I just went with it!

All of the decorations on these cupcakes were edible. I used raw sugar for the "sand" on the cupcakes.

The treasure chests were made out of fondant. The treasure is sprinkles and hand-made coins.

Fondant X-marks the spot

The coins I used fondant to create. I punched them out with a circle cutter and searched everywhere around my house for something that I could stamp with in order to make them look like coins. I ended up using the top of a tequila bottle. :) I then brushed the coins with gold and silver lusterdust.

Fondant sword, also brushed with silver lusterdust.

 Braysen's smash cake. This cake was the first time I used what is called a buttercream transfer. I'm not completely happy with how some of the edges turned out. I don't think I piped the icing thick enough. I'll know better for next time!

Marshmallow pops.
In many of these pictures you will see these little tags that were originally supposed to be cupcake toppers. They were designed by Rhiannon at Doodlebug & Dimples. I used them on some of the sticks for the goodies, on table centerpieces, and sprinkled on the tables.

Cannonballs (red velvet cake balls)

In the background ar more marshmallow pops and skull-shaped vanilla cake pops.

One thing I don't have a closeup of the chocolate pretzel rods, but you can kind of see them in the bottom of this picture.

 I called these cupcake sandwiches simply because I couldn't think of a clever way to word whoopie pies, but they are really just whoopie pies!



Valentine Lady Bug Cupcakes

Lady Bug cupcakes for an adorable Kindergarten Valentine's Tea. You can check out all of the details at Doodlebug & Dimples.

Red velvet cupcakes with buttercream icing.

Gender Reveal Cupcakes

I was so excited to do these cupcakes because I've wanted to do them for so long. One of my friends is pregnant and just found out the sex of her baby. She let me make cupcakes to reveal the gender to some of her good friends. I can't reveal who this person is, because as far as I know, there are still some people who don't know she's pregnant yet. :)

Which is it? Boy or girl?

It's a GIRL!!

These are vanilla cupcakes with buttercream filling and icing.

Better Than WHAT???

For the Jackson's Superbowl Party, I made cupcakes. They were based on a cake that Tony's Aunt Jeri made one year for Christmas. You can find the recipe here, on Tony's cousin Steph's blog.

Anywhoo, the name of the cake is "Better than ____" cake (I'm not putting the real name because I know for a fact I have at least one student who reads this blog...Hello Makenna!!). Since I'm not too fond of the name for the cake, I will call them Hanky Panky Cupcakes. Much better! :) I copied and pasted a majority of her recipe then highlighed my adaptations.

I followed Steph's recipe, but made a few changes:

1 box German cake mix bake cake as directed in a 13 x 9 pan - I baked 2 dozen cupcakes instead
After baking while still hot, punch holes all over the cake using a fork, knife, skewers- whatever.
Pour over the hot cake 1 can sweetened condensed milk and 1 jar caramel ice cream topping - I heated and mixed together the sweetened condensed mink and the caramel topping on the stovetop before I poured a little over each cupcake.
Let the cake cool.
On the top of the cake spread 1 (12 oz) tub of cool whip and sprinkle chopped Heath bars all over (3-4 candy bars) - I made my own whipped cream frosting to pipe on top of the cupcakes. Recipe is below.
Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Super Easy and Super Yummy Whipped Cream Frosting
1 (8 ounce) package reduced-fat cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup white sugar
11/2  teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups heavy cream

Combine the cream cheese, sugar, vanilla extract and almond extract in a large mixing bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer. Fit the mixer with the whisk attachment and mix on medium speed until smooth. While the mixture is still whipping, slowly pour in the heavy cream. Stop and scrape the bottom of the bowl a couple of times while you continue whipping until the cream can hold a stiff peak.

I'm not a huge fan of chocolate, or even cake for that matter (yeah, go figure!), but everybody at the party seemed to love them!

MORE Woodland Fairy & Friends

More pictures from Sawyer's First Birthday Party. These were taken by Nicole from Touch the Heart Photography.

Woodland Fairy & Friends (Sawyer's 1st Birthday)

Sawyer's 1st birthday was a Woodland Fairy & Friends themed party. I set the cupcakes up like this just to get a shot before I packed them up for the party. They way Valerie had everything displayed at the party was much cuter, but I'm lame and forgot to get a picture. I also forgot to get a picture of the chocolated pretzels. Maybe when she posts her pictures I will be able to steal a few. :)

 Sawyer's smash cake was a sugar-free & egg-free apple spice cake with sugar-free cream cheese icing. I will be completely honest with you, this icing was very difficult to work with. Because it doesn't contain any sugar at all, it basically defies all cake decorating rules. :) Knowing how difficult it would be to work with, I'm pretty pleased with the outcome, because I didn't think I would be able to get it even remotely smooth or get it to pipe to create any decorations at all.

Red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing and mushroom mini cake pops.

Red velvet mini cupcakes with cream cheese icing. These were mushroom and moss cupcakes. I had quite a few questions about what the "moss" was made out of. :) Don't worry...it is completely edible.

Christmas Cupcakes

Red velvet cupcakes with homemade italian buttercream icing.

I know that red velvet is traditionally iced with cream cheese icing, but my family LOVES italian buttercream. It is the only icing that is ever used on any homemade birthday cake that has come out of any of our kitchens!

Fall Stuff

Chocolate mini cupcakes with homemade italian buttercream

Chocolate Cake Pops



Chocolate drizzled pretzels



Pumpkin Cupcakes

I made these little pumpkin cupcakes for my students and teachers that I work with for tomorrow. Yes, they're very simple. The reason? Because I made 96 of them!

Yes, I said 96!

Sesame Street

Smash cake is chocolate cake with peanut butter & banana filling. Iced and decorated with homemade buttercream. Cupcakes were a mix between white cake with cinnamon buttercream, strawberry with chocolate buttercream, and chocolate with buttercream.