More Cupcake Cuteness

I had a few leftover cupcakes from Harry Potter in the freezer, still undecorated and in need of some love.

There's not much to say here, I just cut out some little flowers out of fondant and sprinkled them on the cupcakes.  But the pictures speak a thousand words.  Aren't they cute?!

Harry Potter Fest

Right now, I'm super stoked about the upcoming Harry Potter movie .

My friends and I are all planning to do see the midnight showing next Tuesday night.  Only nine days away!

You're probably wondering why I am sharing my extreme excitement on my blog.

Don't worry.  I have a reason.

I'm planning on making Harry Potter themed cupcakes (and possibly sugar cookies) for the big event.  (And when I say decorated cupcakes, I don't just mean putting a plastic ring with Harry's face on it like the grocery stores sometimes do. Not that I'm hating on grocery store cupcakes.  Just that I'm a little crazier. :-) ) I'm going to go all out with glitter and fondant and crazy colors and flavors.  It will be cupcaketastic and definitely epic.

So stay tuned for more of my Harry Potter/cupcake/baking adventures!  You'll also probably hear about my Threadcakes entry and a couple other contests I want to enter, but Harry Potter comes first.  I know, I probably sound like a crazy fangirl right now.

In the meantime, if you'd like to share any ideas you'd like to see manifested in my HP cupcakes, feel free to drop me a comment!

(poster image from cineposters.com )

Red, White, & Blue Cupcakes

I made these yummy little cupcakes for the 4th of July holiday.  Strawberry cupcakes, and blue or white buttercream and some patriotic sprinkles.

Seems pretty simple, right?

Not quite.  But then again, is anything ever simple for me?

I had a grand plan in mind, but unfortunately I had to sacrifice some of that dream in lieu of some missing ingredients.  Thankfully, cake decorators must be able to think on their feet, so I made some last minute changes to the final cupcake design.

What I wanted to do was make strawberry cupcakes (that part went as planned, except the cupcakes didn't turn out very red, so food coloring may be in order next time) with a deep blue buttercream (well, actually, I wanted to make Italian Meringue Buttercream , but I'll save that for a different day) and white star or nonpareil sprinkles.

Unfortunately, Target, Costco, and Publix do not have white sprinkles of any sort.  Publix does, however, have some pearly, princessy sprinkles that my dad bought, but I ended up with the red/white/blue mix of jimmies.

And I ended up making the icing half-and-half with the colors.  Sure, I could've made some red, but with that last few cakes I've made... well, to be honest, I cringed at the thought of mixing up more red.  I would like to head over to the Cake Art Party Store and try Americolor's Super Red gel , though, because I hear red icing is easier to make with that.

And I really like the cupcake liners that I found, unexpectedly, in the dollar section of Super Target.  72 cupcake liners for $2.  Not a bad deal.

I hope everyone has a happy and safe July 4th here in the U.S. and abroad!

(**Thanks to my sister Katie for taking the pictures**)

Happy Birthday, Kaylee and Sue Ann!

I was commissioned this weekend to make two birthday cakes.

The first is a sheet cake, half yellow & half chocolate, for Kaylee's 10th birthday (if you can't tell, she loves to play soccer).  Kaylee's mom has been a long time reader of my blog so I was pretty stoked that she asked me to make this cake. :D  I had fun making it, even if I never made a 2-flavor cake before, and I thought it turned out pretty awesome.  The soccer ball is a FBCT that I probably should've kept in the freezer longer, but it turned out fine in the end.

I also realize that this isn't the best picture, but I thought I would have time to shave my legs AND take photos before it was time for the cake to be picked up.  Well, time management was never my strong point.

And this second cake is a red velvet cake for my mom's friend Sue Ann.  I decorated it right after I finished Kaylee's cake, so Sunday was quite the cake decorating day for me.  I know this cake is a little more simple than the last few cakes I made (where are the flames?!), but I still like it.

One question that I think we should all think very deeply about is whether or not to use buttercream during the middle of June in the southern United States.  I know that's a thought that will keep me up at night. :-) As in, buttercream with real butter in it.  I know you can't tell, but my 50/50 buttercream (butter/crisco) definitely melted, so I made up another batch of icing with only Crisco and combined the two recipes, so I ended up with a 1/3 butter & 1/3 Crisco formula which still looked a little droopy.  I ended up with a lot of icing, too, so it's a good thing I made two cakes.  I really like the buttery icing, but I have a feeling I won't be using it much over the next few months.

(On second thought, I did use the Costco unsalted sweet cream butter, and I don't let its texture as much as the Kroger or Publix brand, so I may have to try again with one of those brands.)

I'm not sure how much baking I'll be doing this week, but Independence Day is this weekend, and I believe that calls for a cake (and yes, definitely sparklers ), and my friend Brian mentioned that he needed a cake, so we'll see if I'm making that any time soon.

The Grill Cake

Every year I try to make something cool and fun for Father's Day, which in the past has included a couple of golf cakes and even a cake where I piled on as much chocolate as I possibly could.

This year inspiration hit me and I decided to make a cake that looks like a grill, because my dad loves to cook out.

I thought my idea was original, but after a quick Google search , I realized that I'm certainly not the first to come up with this idea, although I still like to think that the execution is still all my own.

The vegetables and meats are all made from a gumpaste/fondant mixture which I colored and then "painted" for the grill lines.

(And by paint I mean a little bit of brown and black icing paste and a drop or two of extract.)

I'm so proud of myself for this cake, because I didn't procrastinate the night before and stay up all night working on this cake.  I did stay up all night, but that was a few days later when I saw Transformers. :-)

The fondant creations were all made a few days before, the cake was baked and decorated on Saturday, and I put everything together on Sunday.

The "coals" are just big icing blobs of various colored gray icing with some powdered sugar dusted on top.  The flames and the grills bars are just basic buttercream.  So it really wasn't a complicated cake, but it turned out really well.

Happy Father's Day, Dad!