Pretty in Pink

Just a quick little addition. It's a vanilla cupcake with a strawberry mousse filling and vanilla frosting. I recently became obsessed with Craig's list. You may pick this up about me, but I have a somewhat obsessive personality...I'll find a hobby or a project for myself and then become completely absorbed...I also have a somewhat short attention span, so this leaves me with many many projects only a fraction of which are ever completed. I like knowing that on any given day I am never without something to do. So back to Craig's list. It's a treasure trove of stuff that with a bit of TLC can easily become your new favorite. For example, I just bought a beautiful set of German fine china (today's cupcake is in the soup bowl). It has 7 full (and one partial) place settings and a bunch of serverware pieces. I'm now trying to locate the 3 pieces to complete the 8th set and I'll have a gorgeous spread for a tiny tiny fraction of what it would actually cost if it was new. Bargain hunting has always been one of my favorite hobbies since it always comes with waves of happiness when I find an amazing item or deal...although you'll never see the happy little dance that comes with that :)

Epic Battle: Vanilla vs. Chocolate

My friend and social calendar keeper, Donna, has been telling her co-workers about my "side-business" and so I have an order for plain Vanilla and plain Chocolate cupcakes. Now, I'm not a big fan of "plain", but understanding that everyone's tastes differ, I decided that plain will never equal boring in my kitchen, so I set about doing research to find the ultimate Vanilla and the ultimate Chocolate cupcake recipe. I think I hit it fairly close on the head. The crumb for both is delicate and moist while still having a powerful flavor of vanilla and chocolate. I decided to give two non-meringue based frostings a try and although they came highly recommended...I think next time I'll stick with my staple recipe, even if it does take 10 times longer to whip up. All in all they both came out very cute and I'm happy with the result.

Just as a side note, I am still in the "research and development" stage of my baking career. I'm mixing up a lot of experiments and I'm still adjusting things I like and don't like from each recipe I find. This is why you will not see any recipes on this blog for a while. It's not that I don't want to share...I just don't want to pass on something that I know is not fool-proof. I know I absolutely hate it when I get a recipe from the web promising heaven and what I get falls desperately short. If there is something in here that catches your eye and you absolutely must know how it's done, feel free to send me an email and I'll be happy to share (as long as it's not a family secret...I do have one or two of those and ask as often as you like, I'm not tellin').

Pingu for my Nephew

This past saturday we celebrated my nephew's 3rd Birthday. Pingu is a character from one of his favorite shows, and therefore the theme of his birthday cake. I made the penguins out of fondant a day in advance and they really seemed to be the hit of the party. All the kids wanted one, which to me is the best compliment ever. I think this was the first time in a while I've made a cake this big and there were almost no leftovers (everone was too afraid to eat the igloo even though that was cake too).


And here are just the little guys before they were relocated to their sugary home:

Breaking Silly no-dessert pacts and whatnot

One of my co-workers, Cat, made a pact that starting Jan 1st she will abstain from sweets in the form of dessert for 6months (she's getting married in the fall and figured it's a good way to lose some weight...nevermind that the pact leaves a gap of about 3 months before her wedding where she can just gorge). Anyhow, one of the loopholes was that she can't refuse cake given to her on her birthday, since that would be rude...so taking full advantage of that I made sure that there would be something sweet and chocolaty on her birthday. I made a whole bunch of these chocolate and earl gray cupcakes and all in all I think they came out awesome. They were very dense and chocolaty almost like a coffee cake and the earl gray ganache really gave them a nice pretty finish. A bit of coffee whipped cream on top and a fondant butterfly all served on top of one of my recently acquired tea cups and I'd say that's one silly pact down and I'm well on my way to undermining many more.

Whatever was lying around

Some co-workers from our Vegas office are visiting this week and they have been heavily hinting that it's about time I deliver on all my promises to bring them food in exchange for getting my task requests to the front of the line. So I decided that as our office is growing, cupcakes are more practical then a cake. I didn't want to go grocery shopping for the third time this week, so I decided that I have enough stuff around the house to whip something up and these are the result of that. They are pear, apple and banana cupcakes with a lemon cream cheese frosting. I've been dying to put sprinkles on something, so that's where that came from.
I've also decided that I need to start a collection of some sort and since I love tea and everything that goes with it, I've decided to start collecting tea cup\saucer sets. Although it sort of defeats the purpose of having the piece find you, I decided that I need to start on this collection right away and a few days (and a few ebay bidding wars) later, I have 5 super cute tea cups, the very first of which is in the pictures. You will be seeing more of them in the future since I think they're the perfect accompaniment to all kinds of dessert.

Soundtrack

My sister found the perfect soundtrack song for this site. I can't really have it play in the background, but if you want to hear it, click here. I thought it was very cute.

I'm sorry that this post doesn't come with more pictures, but I'll be baking all day tomorrow, so I'll definitely have something new to post then.

Happy Cupcakes

For my birthday, my sister bought me the cutest little tray ever, but up until now I have not had a good opportunity to use it. So when my co-worker friend Sarah, who by the way has also been one of my best customers, wanted cupcakes for her bridal shower I thought that these little cuties would look perfect on the tray for their photo op. You can't see all of it in the picture above, but it says "My Happiness" on it, and so far everyone that has tried these cupcakes agrees that the statement is appropriate.
The cupcakes themselves are made of a light lemony cake, soaked with lemon and Chambord spiked simple syrup, filled with raspberry whip cream, and topped with a lemony raspberry buttercream. Despite the different parts, the result came out very refreshing and light, and my mom, who's my biggest and most honest critic, had nothing bad to say about them (I think that might be a first).

Tower of Tarts

I bought a whole bunch of little tartlet molds and an even at work was the first chance I got to use them. I made two different kinds: lemon meringue tart and chocolate raspberry. Both got polished off in no time flat, but the funniest part was that just walking to work with the saran wrapped tower, I got several offers to take the tarts "off my hands".

New Year Cake

I've been meaning to try the "ice cream cone cake" for a while, so when my sister asked me to make a cake for her New Year's party, I figured I'd give it a try. The design came out great, so all that's left to do now is try out different fillings and frostings to make it even better!

Caramel Apple Cupcakes

I made these little guys for my friends baby shower. They are apple cupcakes with caramel on top. Kind of like a caramel apple, but better since there's cake involved. I got the idea from here, but I made some modifications to it to make it more to my taste. They were a huge success.

Happy 2nd Birthday Josh!

I made this cake for my nephew's 2nd birthday. He loves cars, so I made a cake that he can play with. And since the road is chocolate ganache, it's the best of both worlds. His 3rd birthday is coming up soon and I'll have to come up with something to top this one.

Marshmallows!!!

I am going to spend the next three weeks making these. They were a blast to make and I've been passing them out for the past week and after the initial shock that someone would be crazy enough to make marshmallows from scratch, people loved them. These are raspberry marshmallows and although the picture doesn't really do them justice they came out like little perfect pink fluffy clouds that just melt in your mouth and go perfectly with a hot cup of cocoa :)

I love waterlilies

I've taken probably hundreds of waterlily pictures at the botanic garden, so when my mom asked me to make a cake for her friend's daughter's 30th and told me to "just do something pretty and different" this was the first thing I thought of. I've bean meaning to experiment more with sugar flowers for a while, just have not had time or opportunity. Each petal is made separately and dried and then "glued" together with royal icing. I made the dragon fly by hand and cut out the lily pads and goldfish from the sugar paste too. I think it came out great and the birthday girl was also excited when she saw it.

Chocolate Filigree

This was another ordered cake that I used to experiment with making chocolate decorations. It's interesting all the things you can make with tempered chocolate and a piping bag. I now have a freezer full of these little decorations.

Peach Butts :)

I got a new cookbook by the retired White House pastry chef and the cutest thing in there were these brioche peaches. I made some modifications to the recipes in the book and brought them into work. I was kinda worried since I've never made brioche before, but the instructions were great and the result came out awesome. A few people thought that they were real peaches and others thought that once you take away the leaf...they look like baby butts, hence the name: Peach Butts :)