A Twin's Dilemma

When you're a twin, I guess it's hard to pick a theme for your birthday party!! This set of preteen twins decided on Transformers / One Direction. 40 cupcakes (1/2 vanilla, 1/2 chocolate) were made and topped with buttercream icing.

The One Direction cupcakes were to be classy/simple with just chocolate and vanilla swirls.

The Transformers cupcakes were more for the guys and topped with a fiery two-tones yellow and orange swirl.

 

 

They turned out pretty well!!

m-i-n-n-i-e -- m-o-u-s-e!!

2nd order for the day! Phew!
This order was for a birthday girl who's turning 1. The theme of her birthday party is Minnie Mouse, so of course everything has to be pink with white polkadots!

First up are 20 cupcakes (10 vanilla and 10 chocolate-flavoured) that were topped with pink icing. I made black fondant ears and pink bows beforehand to let them dry and harden.



vanilla on one side, chocolate on the other

  The 8" round two-tiered cake stands about 4" tall (without the cake topper). It's covered in pink fondant with white fondant dots. I piped a shell border on the bottom and laced with cake board with pink ribbon. The cake topper is a Disney hat with the birthday girl's name piped on it using pink icing. The hat was a challenge to make because it takes a few days to dry and harden, and the ears had to be stabilized. The big pink bow on top was made separately (also days in advance) with equal parts fondant and gumpaste to allow it to harden faster.


Minnie Mouse Cake

This was a fun cake to make because it's so different from what I have done in the past. I hope I get a chance to make more cake toppers so I can get better at it!

Keep Calm & Love One Direction

This order was for a 18th birthday party: 18 Oreo cupcakes and a 6" round vanilla fondant cake. The theme was One Direction and the colors were to be red, blue, and white (i.e Union Jack).

The cupcakes were made with an Oreo cookie on the bottom, and with a two-toned (red & blue) buttercream icing. This was the first time I'd done this type of icing and thought it came out really well. Each cupcake was then topped with a 2" round fondant cutout with an edible picture on top.  

Two-toned Buttercream Icing

 

Buttercream icing swirl



Finished cupcakes

 

Keep Calm & <3 One Direction



Close-Up of Cupcakes

The 6" round two-tier vanilla cake is separated with a layer of white buttercream icing and stands 5" tall. I covered it in red fondant, and piped a star border around the edges. Circling the cake is the saying, "One Band. One Dream. One Direction.". It is topped with a customized edible picture for the birthday girl. As you can see in the picture below, the red fondant has bled through the rice paper a little. Don't worry..after much afterthought, I now know how to prevent this from happening again in the future!

"One Band. One Dream. One Direction."



On a side note, I plan on using this two-toned buttercream method again. Instead of the IM swirl, it can also be used to create rosettes on a cupcake..like this:

An Engagement Cake

You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams. ~ Dr. Seuss

I love that quote! Two friends of mines are now engaged (congrats!) and decided they wanted a cake at their family engagement party. Their colors were salmon pink, silver, and black and they asked for a 12" square lemon cake. I made this cake with a 3" cake pan and tripled the lemon cake recipe the soon-to-be bride had given me. 

They didn't want anything too fancy or to include fondant so I decided to cover the cake in pink icing, pipe out congratulations in black, add intertwined rings, and sorround the base with ribbon.

The silver ribbon I chose was mesh-like so to avoid having the buttercream seep through, I lined the back of the ribbon with strips of wax paper to make sure the cake was still safely edible. I then layered a thinner black ribbon on top of this.

It's Christmas Time!!

Ok, Christmas was actually last week..but i'm just now getting to posting things! Hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and hope Santa was good to you! And while i'm at it..happy new year!!

This Christmas I didn't bake as many cookies or decorate as many cupcakes but instead have been addicted to Pintrest and decided to get in touch with my crafty side!

One idea I found was to make homemade "ready hot cocoa in a jar". I got a couple of mason jars from the store, washed, and dried them extremely well since the contents could be sitting inside for a few months. I filled each jar with 10 tablespoons of cocoa powder (2 tbsps per cup of cocoa, so this jar would give someone 5 cups of hot cocoa!) and topped the remaining space with mini marshmallows to make their cup that much sweeter. I sealed each jar, and wrapped it with twine to give it a finished rustic touch. I also attached a few labels to make it more personalized.

A head of time, I had created "how-to use" instruction labels. I printed this onto carkstock paper and "laminted" it with tape (this way, if the jars ever came in contact with water, the labels would be undamaged). The first label says "Hot Chocolate", and if you move that to a side the label behind reads, "Scoop two tbsp of cocoa powder into your favorite cup. Add 175mL of hot water or hot milk. Stir well. Enjoy! Makes 5 cups"

The other side of the jar had another label wishing the special friend a Merry Christmas! This tag was found on Pintrest.

 I only made a few jars but think in the future this would be great take-home present at Christmas parties.

Christmas just isn't Christmas without some sort of cupcake! I made this cupcake for a friend..she specifically requested a purple and green snowflake cupcake and probably thought I'd forget all about it! I topped a vanilla cupcake with a green buttercream swirl, added a few red/green sprinkles. Then i cut out a 2" fondant circle and piped a purlpe snowflake on top. When this was dry I placed it ontop of the cupcake!

 A side view.

 I decided to get a cucpake box and (again with the twine) decided to give it a handle so she can take it home easier. I also strung a Pintrest-found tag through the twine to make it personal.

Another friend wanted a snowman cupcake, and he too probably thought I'd forget all about it! I found this idea and thought it was the cutest thing..it also went with the fact that we had yet to receive a bucket full of snow, so any snowman out there was sure to be melting!! I probably should have made him with a scared face..but wheres the Christmas spirit in that?!

This cupcake was also vanilla, topped with white buttercream icing. The face is a large marshmallow with piped black icing for the eyes/smile and a little orange for his carrot nose. 

He also got its own little box with personalized tag.

I liked this idea so much I decided to replicate it. I was going to a Christmas party where there would be lots of kids..all of whom were missing the fun of snow. So thought this would be great!

By the time these cupcakes made it to the party in its sealed container, the marshmallow had softened and become gooey without the decoration melting or coming off...which the kids found even more enjoyable!!

Merry Christmas!



A little someone new!

You may recall in March 2011 I made a baby shower cake (read about it here) for a friend. Well, now she and her husband are on baby #2! Again, they decided to wait to find out the gender of the baby so I decided to do a "pink or blue, we welcome you" cake for the little one.

I wanted to make it a little different, and I enjoy creating fondant cake toppers, so I decided to have a baby stork sitting next to a sleeping baby wrapped in a blanket. This cake was two layers..the top layer was blue, the bottom layer was pink, separated by a thin layer of buttercream icing.

The fondant stork was a little challenging and took a few days to dry since I did not add gumpaste to it (I was out!). I used a toothpick in the middle of the body to hold it all together. The legs and beak were inserted later after they had dried more. I added little bits of white fondant hair, and thin printed wings to his back. His eyes are made from black edible ink.

This is an ariel view of the cake. As you can see, I have the stork and baby sitting on a thin white fondant "carpet" imprinted with hearts, using a heart cookie cutter. The letters were done with the help of Tappits letter cutters.

A closeup of the stork and sleeping (snoring?) baby.

A side view of the cake. I lined the side with four pink fondant bows and four blue fondant bows. Then strung together pink/blue twisted fondant ribbon in between every other bow, attached to the cake with a dab of buttercream icing.

Baby Update: Baby Sophie came into the world December 18, 2012!!

Vampire Diaries

"What`s so special about this Bella girl? Edward`s so whipped." - Damon Salvatore, Vampire Diaries.

What's with the sudden influx of shows and movies and books about vampires?? Beats me, but I got a request to make Vampire Diaries cupcakes for a birthday girl so I got into the vampire spirit and went for it. After doing a little bit of research, I found out there's a Team Damon and a Team Stefan..and a girl named Elena. Much like Edward/Jacob/Bella from Twilight. The birthday girl was on Team Damon so as you guessed it, the majority of cupcakes were Damon-ized!

She is a fan of red velvet cake so I made about 26 mini cupcakes topped with cream cheese icing swirls. I made cake toppers and attached red plastic toothpicks. This is how they turned out.

Team Damon + Elena

 These toppers were printed on cardstock paper and attached to a red toothpick.

Personalized birthday toppers