Cupcakes for Life

Cupcakes for Life is a once-a year-program (on October 9th) to promote awareness for pro-life issues, most specifically abortion. The website asks, "What's worse than being in 3rd grade and not having anyone celebrate your birthday? Not being allowed to be born!"

So the basic premise is that everyone bakes cupcakes, and gives them away for free, in honor and memory of the millions of children who will never be born. I made them with the Imago Dei club on campus and we put pro-life messages on the little cuppies like "YAY BABIES" and "Life is precious."

On Friday during lunch, we gave away 110 cupcakes, along with some flyers, to bring awareness on campus.

And guess what? It was a huge success! And even though 110 cupcake seems like a lot (4 box mixes, 4 cans of icing, a whole dozen eggs...), they were given out very quickly. So next year we gotta kick it up a notch!

Anyway, it was a lot of fun and it was a great cause. I'm so proud that I was able to help bring this nationwide program to my little corner of the world. Yay babies!

Baby Cakes

Lots of baby shower cakes recently, and lots of babies! At Bliss, there were 2 baby shower cakes and a cupcake order last week. I took quite a few cake orders at Publix, too. Plus there was the cake that I got to make! :)

I modeled it off this cake I found at Cake Central. The baby shower's theme colors were green and pink, and I just loved the swirls and polka dots. I was a little worried about the border, but I practiced on some wax paper before-hand, and it really brings the whole cake together. I used the #12 tip for that, and a #5 for everything else, except the writing, which is a #2.

It's all buttercream, with a delicious yellow cake underneath. And it turns out that simple syrup really isn't that simple, because I ran out of granulated sugar. I tried it with Splenda, but it left a funny taste; the brown sugar turned the liquid a maple brown color, which wouldn't have looked good on the yellow cake; and the powdered sugar was murky because of the corn starch. So my parents picked up some sugar on their way home, and the crisis was averted.

But other than that (and the fact that I was babysitting all day, dropped a hot, cheesy pizza on the floor, and didn't get to bed until 1am), this cake was a breeze to make. I smoothed down the dots with a paper towel to get them flat, which took some manuvering, but it worked out quite nicely.

And I still can't get over how cute that swirly border is!

Baby Shower Cake

I have never made a baby shower cake before, but I'm happy to say that now I have.

This cute little cake was made for a friend of mine, her mom's baby shower is today.

The cake is lemon with lemon buttercream  (it smelled amazing, and the cake scraps were yummy).  I got the cake recipe from Elisa Strauss' book, Confetti Cakes for Kids .

The blocks are made of rice krispie treats, covered in a double layer of fondant and decorated with more fondant.  Of course, after I spent a good 2 or 3 hours on them, I found out that there does indeed exist an easier method .  Oh well, maybe for next time.

The flowers, borders, and letters are all buttercream.  Because I fail at making flowers sideways, I piped them onto wax paper, froze them (they need to be in there a good twenty minutes to solidify), then stuck them on the cake with a dab more buttercream.  Add some little leaves, and viola!

I'm off to make my sister's birthday cake now.  All the cool kids have birthdays in August. :-)