Ole-Talk

Baby Knitting and Cupcakes

Another Museum baby is on the way so of course we had to celebrate and throw a shower.  And what's a baby shower with out cupcakes and gifts.

Remember the sneak peek from Wednesday?  Here's the full reveal of what I made...baby hat and booties.  Aren't they cute and the yarn is called Girlieflage...squeal!

The cupcakes also had a girlie theme!

They almost did not make it to the shower as my oven decided to stop working.  I had them all mixed up and in the pans and the oven decided to not light.  Luckily a great friend came to the rescue and I was able to trek over to her house (in the rain I may add) and use her oven.That's dedication for you!

Just a simple vanilla cake with a dark chocolate Hershey's Kiss as a sweet surprise in the middle.  The toppers are a mix of homemade marshmallow fondant and molded chocolate.

Here's a photo of our baby shower spread! It was a lot of fun and the parent's to be where very happy and thankful!

Thanks for stopping by!

Baby Girl Cupcakes

So I thought that after the summer I would be all done with baby showers for 2012.  However, another of our friends at the Museum is expecting her first kid so of course we had an excuse to throw another party and I had an excuse to make more baby themed cupcakes.  These are just a basic chocolate cupcake with a vanilla butter cream frosting.

I dipped a toothpick in some red food colour and ran it up the inside of the frosting bag in a few places before filling it with the frosting and this made the slight pink tint that you can see.

Vanilla chocolate, tinted pink was used to make the booties and pacifier toppers.

Thanks for visiting and happy Monday!

S'mores Cupcake

Here's a little something to brighten your Monday monning!

S'mores Cupcakes!
Made these last week...chocolate cake batter over graham cracker crust, marshmallow melted in the middle of the cake. 
my usual buttercream frosting, and garnished with a roasted marshmallow, and regular and chocolate graham cracker!

Happy Monday!!

Baby Shower Fever | Take 5

As promised in my last baby shower fever post I am sharing what I did for my friend Kristen's baby shower at the end of May.  I had a lot of fun coming up with ideas and then making all the stuff.  Today I will share the cupcakes that I made and tomorrow I'll show you all the decorations.

I made both chocolate with a chocolate Hersey kiss in the middle and ginger maple spice.  Both were frosted with buttercream tinted blue of course.  The toppers were paper ones that I print and cut with my Silhouette and then attached to lollipop sticks.

The other topper that I did were little candy pacifiers and booties made with melt and pour chocolate and molds.  It was my first time using the melt and pour and it was the easiest thing ever.  If I knew just how easy it was to make chocolate shapes I would have been melting and pouring a long time ago.

Here are a couple of close ups!

And here they are all packed up and ready to go.

Check back tomorrow for the last of my baby shower fever posts.

Baby Shower Fever | Take 3

After a brief break yesterday to post Sister Sketch I am back to share some more baby shower stuff.  Today is all about cupcakes.

I made a basic vanilla cupcake and for the baby boy ones I did a blueberry marshmallow filling and buttercream frosting.  Oh and I should note here that blueberries make frosting lilac not blue...just saying!

The baby girl cupcakes have a strawberry filling and frosting, and yes strawberries do make things pink! Imagine that!

The cupcake toppers were cut with my Silhouette.  I used a regular cut shape and used the fill tool and line color tool to add color to the shapes and words and then cut them using the print and cut feature.  Attach them to both sides of a lollipop stick and your topper is done.

The cupcakes were a hit and I got the highest compliment from coworkers who thought they were from a bakery and said that they were very professionally done.

Thanks for looking.  Check out take 1 and take 2 to see what else I did.

Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes

I have been promising my friend Carol that I would make her chocolate raspberry cupcakes and I finally got around to doing them this weekend.  I used the chocolate cake recipe from these S'mores cupcakes, made a raspberry filling with marshmallow fluff, powdered sugar and raspberry puree that I made from fresh raspberries.

The frosting is my standard buttercream with some of the fresh raspberry puree.  I love how moist the cake came out and there is just the right amount of raspberry.

Oh and Carol totally enjoyed them so mission accomplished!

Pink Cheetah Strawberry Cupcakes...

 ...and why you should always follow Vernell's cardinal rule of baking!

It has been a while since I posted about my cupcakes, not because I haven't been baking but because I have not tried anything new the last few times I baked.  However, last week I made these pink cheetah strawberry flavored cupcakes as a special request for one of the students who works for Sheldon.

Here's a peek at how these came together.

I cut the circles from homemade marshmallow fondant that I tinted with pink gel food coloring, then left them to dry for a couple days before adding the pattern.

I found the idea for doing the pattern here.  I diluted some of the pink food coloring with a bit of vodka and painted the shapes with a small paint brush.  Let dry overnight.

The next day I added the black with a food safe marker using the cupcake liner as a guide.

Make strawberry cupcakes (with a true and tried recipe that you know actually works..see below for that story) and frost with strawberry butter cream.

Add the cheetah decorated circles and viola...Pink Cheetah Strawberry Cupcakes.

Now for the why you should always follow Vernell's cardinal rule of baking... NEVER try a new recipe the night before cupcakes are supposed to be delivered.  Chances are that you will end up making two batches of cupcakes.  I decided against my better judgement to try a recipe that I had never made before totally ignoring my tingling spider senses.  Needless to say 10 minutes into the baking I realized that they were not rising. WTF!! 

They tasted really good but really, no way could I give these to someone...well maybe my friends at work?!

So while my second batch of cupcakes baked I had a light bulb moment for these.  I decided to sandwich two together with some strawberry jam, add some frosting and there you have it Vernell's strawberry jam sandwich cupcakes.  Lets just say that my friends were not complaining.

Chocolate Surprise Candy Cane Cupcakes

Chocolate cupcakes with a dark chocolate Hersey's Kiss in the middle.

With peppermint candy cane butter cream frosting.

View from atop!

Ghostly Cupcakes

Happy Halloween to those who celebrate it!  I found another pumpkin pie cupcake recipe to try this week.  This one is definitely more cake like than pie, unlike the ones I shared last week.

Of course I had to turn them into something fitting for the day so made these ghosts by adding mini chocolate chips to the frosting.

You can find the recipe I used here.  I only used the recipe for the cupcakes (with a few tweeks) and made my own version of a filling and frosting.  I call these pumpkin cupcakes with a brown sugar, maple frosting.

RIP Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes

With Halloween just around the corner here in the US I made these fun pumpkin pie cupcakes for our annual Halloween get together at our friend Monica's.

These are more pie like than cake but I love how they came out and they taste awesome.  The  tombstones are a mix of ideas that I found from doing a google search for halloween cupcake decorating ideas.