Appearance on the Cupcake Blog

I love the Cupcake Blog. So do thousands of other people...but this site holds a special place in my cupcake loving heart. And today, on my favorite holiday of the year...my Halloween cupcakes made an appearance. Not to toot my own horn...but TOOT TOOT!

Thank you, Cupcake Blog. You are the greatest! :D

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Ice Cream Birthday Cake

I made an ice cream cake. Yes, I will say it again....I made an ice cream cake. It was hard not to eat this yummy-looking ice cream cake as I was assembling it. It was also all I could do to keep my kids and husband away from this cake. I believe I now owe them an ice cream cake of their very own!

It's ice cream...which I love. Cake...which I love. It's a lethal and joyous and scrumptious combination!

This particular one is a very simple cake....a mint chocolate chip ice cream paired with dark chocolate cake and vanilla SMB. I topped it with chunks of silky Ghiradelli chocolate mint pieces...and a four leaf clover, to celebrate the birthday boy's Irish heritage. Simple. Delicious. The perfect birthday gift!

Cake for my Hubby...Sort Of....

Justin asked me if I could make a cake for his work, the Department of Justice was having a CFC cake raffle. Of course, I would never say no to that! What he initially wanted was a cake with a pumpkin patch much like the Halloween birthday cake I made. What I wanted was something he could easily carry into work without it all coming apart.

I am very particular about my cakes being delivered without my supervision. What can I say?! :)

I went for simple beauty....a ruffled cake (Wilton #104 tip) with piped dahlias (Wilton #81 tip). The flowers incorporated simple elegance in orange and red fall colors. The cake was finished with my favorite....gold disco dust!!

All for a good cause!! And the cake, I have been told, went to a very happy customer. Enjoy! :D

Teapot Birthday Cake...Short and Stout

My mother-in-law's birthday is in October. I wanted to make something special...but not Halloween themed for her birthday. My sweet husband is actually the one who suggested a teapot cake. So, I decided on a teapot in the garden, since she loves gardening and flowers. Perfect fit!

This was my first teapot cake and I will say these are very easy to make. However, this one isn't to my complete satisfaction (yes I am a very A-type personality and extremely picky!). Let me explain. Many teapot cakes are make from 6" cakes. They're petite and adorable. Mine is 9"...so basically huge and bulky!!! However, I did have to transport the pieces 3 hours before assembling them for the family birthday gathering. I needed enough cake to feed everyone but didn't want to make extra cupcakes, etc. So, short and stout it was. Also the lid is cake and not fondant, like on some other teapot cakes. :) The cake was delicious and the teapot looked great, even though it was not exactly the design I wanted to make. At least the birthday girl loved it!

All together it is a pretty festive and lively piece!

My favorite part of this cake was the flowers. I love any excuse to practice making gumpaste and fondant flowers. Most of the flowers for this cake were made from fondant mixed with Tylose powder, then hand-painted with petal dust. I usually make gumpaste flowers but I wanted to try something different. I just didn't have enough time to dry the fondant as well as I would have liked....so next time I will probably use gumpaste. The flowers turned out pretty well though!

My other favorite piece of this cake was the tea cup. It was just plain adorable! This was made from rice krispie treats that were molded into shape then covered in fondant. The handle was made from gumpaste and adhered to the cup with a toothpick.

Again, being a sucker for details....notice the ladybug?

The spout and handle on the teapot are also made from gumpaste, and adhrered to the cake with lollipop sticks.

 

More details....mushrooms and butterflies. :D

The little flower pots were also rice krispies covered in fondant. The leaves and grass are piped buttercream.

Halloween Birthday Cake

My favorite cake of the month was a Halloween birthday cake that I made for a friend's sister. This was a pumpkin spice cake, one of my favorite recipes. It was piped with a Wilton #104 tip in a ruffle pattern. The color is purple, a traditional Halloween color and also the birthday girl's favorite.

 

Most importantly, it was also an extremely cute design.

There was quite a bit of back and forth between my friend and I on the design ideas for this cake. As much as I like surprising people, it is even better when someone has an idea that they like and we can work together to fuse ideas and create something memorable. This cake was a lot of fun and completely adorable!

The main focus of the cake was Clawdius the Cat. Clawdius is the black cat that belongs to the birthday girl. Clawdius is a rambunctious cat...he's a "killer." Hence the reason Clawdius is stalking the adorable and unsuspecting mouse on the cake! Clearly my friend's family has a great sense of humor. Really....they are not twisted or sick individuals! ;)

Cute little Clawdius....

Adorable and unsuspecting mouse...

No one is out there to help the poor mouse because they're all at the birthday party!! (Just kidding.) :D

I am in love with this pumpkin patch...each pumpkin was a different color, shape and quite perfect. :)

This is a non-traditional Halloween and birthday cake and I am very happy with the results!

The Nightmare Cake Before Halloween....

I did manage to experiment with one cake this month...THE one cake that had it turned out, it would have been epic. I have to be honest, I didn't think this one stood a chance. However, I am inspired by new and amazingly challenging things. When I see something that grabs me, I am pulled by a gnawing need to TRY it. And try it I did!

In the beginning, there was hope....

For a very, very short time, anyway, there was hope....

Ha! Silly me, I didn't even bother to take a photo of the individual and perfectly adorable (all fondant hand-cut and perfectly placed, thank you!) cakes BEFORE stacking them! DOH!

Seems like a good start, right?!?!

Let me just get to the point right now....this was a failure of a cake. Well, to be kind to myself, this cake was wonderfully executed...until about the last ten seconds of its too-short life.

Really, I over-thought this cake. Putting this cake together is no different than stacking any other tiered cake. Now I know this...why I overlooked this most basic cake construction theory before putting this cake together...I just don't know!

Oh yes, I will revisit this cake idea someday....I know there is a baker's trick to the construction of this cake. I will figure it out...and I will conquer it. Because, when it comes together, this is just a stunning cake design!

Voila!! It's stacked!! I laugh at myself now...NO the silly cupcakes don't make it look any less painful!! Haha! Oh yeah....had this stacking idea worked can you imagine how cool I would have felt?! Well, it didn't. So what was really going on in the kitchen was my husband and I telling each other: "Quick, take it apart before it gets worse, so we can still eat it!"

Good grief, I should have taken a photo of it BEFORE it came to its slow and painful death. It looked marvelous literally for about one minute before this happened. (I am still chuckling to myself here.) Although, I am happy to share my failures as well as triumphs, and this is one that definitely made me laugh.

Now on to the next one!

Halloween Cupcakes Part 2

I intended to produce some fabulous Halloween treats every weekend in the month of October as a personal project to myself. I amassed dozens of pages of thoughts and ideas and desires and plans.....and well, as a mom and a wife and a friend and a woman with a full-time job who also values her sleep, I would never have had the time to accomplish any of these projects no matter how hard I tried!!!! So clearly...the stacks of Halloween cake and cupcake dreams didn't come to fruition. I am not disappointed in the least about the new business and customers I have acquired, nor am I about all the other things that keep me busy in life. I was just disappointed that here we are, it is Halloween night, and I didn't have the time to produce the ONE, SOLE, ONLY, BEST IN THE WORLD Halloween cake of my dreams this month. Sigh....better luck next year. ;)

I did create some fun things this month, though.....mostly in cupcake form! One such project included these mini-cupcakes. Again, dark chocolate. The piping was nothing fancy (Wilton #8 and #21 tips).....but they were covered in some pretty cute fondant cut-outs. I debated about making 3-D cupcake characters. I debated about making more extravagant 2-D decorations. Then....after much more debating....I decided that simplicity was best.

Tasty, don't you think?

A little disco dust is also always a welcome companion on any dessert in my home. ;)

Girl's Night Cupcakes

I disappeared for most of October...really, where did the month go? Sorry for the absence....I promise to try to be better in November. TRY being the operative word here!

What can be better than a night of chick flicks, good company, decadent chocolate cupcakes and a marvelous bottle of wine? Well....not much can be better, really. :)

This cupcake recipe isn't anything new for me, these are my usual dark chocolate cupcakes with cinnamon mocha buttercream, just in mini-cupcake form. The piping isn't anything new for me either......these are my flowers piped with a Wilton tip #104.

So then, why bother with a blog post?? For no reason other than I thought these little cupcakes were adorable, the photos are decent, and it was a wonderfully fun girl's night....all worth sharing. I plan to have many more cupake and wine nights with the ladies like these to come!

Halloween Cake and Cupcakes...Week 1

Happy October everyone!

Halloween is my favorite holiday, as many of my close friends know. So to start the season off right I've kicked off my four weeks of Halloween cake and cupcake fun!! (Yes, my house is already also decorated.) :D

To start off, I made a very simple Halloween cake. Why so simple? Well because I have plans for one or two even bigger ones this month. I'm saving up for the good stuff to come later!

This is the same flower tip I used to make the September project cake, however a bigger size. This tip doesn't work as well as the #81, for anyone who is interested in trying this technique later. This particular tip made the buttercream too heavy and floppier. Although still cute! The cake is topped with white candy melts (the "Boo" and the ghost).

The cake and cupcakes are vanilla cake with lemon filling and lemon Swiss meringue buttercream.

Hello cute little Halloween cupcakes!

The witches hat and black cat are fondant. The rest are candy melts.

I'm really liking the purple buttercream color.

 

I'm also liking the spider web and spider!!



My sons are huge fans of the skeletons...I thought they were pretty adorable too.

These are just some simple piped pumpkins, nothing fancy.



I LOVE the witch's hat. Next time I want to make a 3D witch!

The ghost says "BOO!"



 

These took just minutes to decorate. I am ready for Halloween, chapter 2. Any ideas or suggestions?? (Don't bother with the Haunted House idea, that is coming Halloween weekend!) :D