Frosty the Snowman

I do believe my cupcake techniques are getting better. I've actually been proud of the last couple of cupcakes I've made. These are coconut cupcakes I made for Joe's company Christmas party and for my piano student's recital. Can you say, "YUM!!"? This is another Martha Stewart recipe that I got out of her Baking Handbook. A deliciously moist cupcake with "7-minute" frosting, which fyi, doesn't take 7 minutes to make. It actually takes about 15 (20 if you count clean-up) but it is DELICIOUS!!! No butter in it, just egg whites, corn syrup and sugar. I used raw sugar and it was just fine.

Then I rolled the fresh-iced cupcakes in sanding sugar. I've purchased all my decorating sanding sugars at Williams-Sonoma. They are larger crystals of sugar. But I'll be totally honest, I compared their green and red sanding sugar to the green or red sprinkles I've purchased at the grocery store and there isn't much difference in appearance. Maybe flavor, but I didn't taste them.

Ah, my snowmen lined up like soldiers in the light of the Christmas tree. I love how the sanding sugar sparkles. I doubled-up my liners, like I always do. But when it came time to presenting them, I went ahead and removed the red and white snowflake liners and just kept the white ones. I kind of liked that even better.

Okay, so I've reached a whole new level of baking with this cupcake. I was tired of producing cupcakes of different mass so I actually weighed every SINGLE cupcake. All the cupcakes have 64 grams of batter. They are perfect. I even did the snowman balls that way. Snowman head was 1 gram, middle was 3, bottom was 5. Hello, Martha! Are you out there? Have I reached your level of awesomeness yet? Perhaps I have exceeded it?!

Look at these beauties. All perfectly round and evenly sized.

Larry the Turkey

I found this recipe online and just had to make them.  Mine didn't exactly turn out like the Duncan Hines photo above.  The kids helped and each tried to make their own.  A lot harder to make than I planned.  

Would love to try them again sometime.

 Our version.  Takes two cupcakes (big and little) and a cookie to make.  

 Our little Katie-bug with her little cupcake.

Poor Larry, he must be exhausted.

Ellie has already picked off the goodies and is now enjoying the moist spice cake.

 Jayden is nibbling on the cookie part.  Yum.

Martha's Pumpkins

Bitty Spice Cake Bundt Pumpkins, covered with orange fondant.

Man!  I love my brother-in-law's camera!

All the super nice pics are either from his camera or Uncle Fred.  

Someday . . .

 

 Many years ago (maybe 10 or more) I purchased a mini bundt pan because I wanted to make Martha Stewart's mini pumpkins.  So this year, for the first time, I made them.  Yes, I had the pan for all those years and never used it.  Upon completion of this wonderous project, I gave my pan away.  Realized it was simply too much work and no one really wanted to eat them because they were "too pretty."  

Kind of miss my pan now and the potential it held.  :(

My neice, Ellie, molding the fondant into the pan.  We let the fondant dry (not for long enough though - I was too impatient).  Then we covered the already made spice cakes.  The spice cakes had been baked in that pan too.  I visualized cupping the cakes with a little orange "shell" but it was actually more difficult than that.

In the background: I also made Martha's pecan tassies.  Yummy little buggars.  

Much better fresh, though.  Once they've been sitting out for a while,
they get quite dry and not worth eating.

Creepy Critters

Super, super fun cupcakes to make! I made them for Joe's company Halloween party and displayed them on these cute little papers. 24 cupcakes total.

By far the most fun cupcakes I've made. Jayden usually likes to help me with the cupcakes I make but is limited with things he can do. These cupcakes kept him busy!

The fun started with our trip to the candy store in the mall. A tiny little shop giving Maci easy access to much of the candy while she sat in her stroller. Oh boy!

We took our Martha Stewart cupcake cookbook for ideas, of course.



Here's a pic of some of the cupcakes ready for transport. There were two trays of cupcakes and they were ALL different.

Here's my cutie trying to do the face of the "one-eye-closed-one-eye-open creature.

First order of business was setting up the designs. I squished ink onto a cup (with the same radius as the cupcake tops) and inked up a piece of paper. I could have traced the cup opening but I thought this was easier and the majestic Martha Stewart would be proud.

So here's our designs. Some of the elements wouldn't stick very well, of course.

I took a picture of this batter because it was interesting to me. I made a vegan cupcake (usually there's butter and eggs). The mixture was so liquidy; I'm not sure one can see how juicy this stuff was. I was worried that they wouldn't turn out but they were just fine.

After they cooked, we topped them with fondant of different colors. The ones in this picture had brown fondant but there were different colors as well. Because the fondant needs to be wet in order to have the candies stick to it, we used a small bowl of water and a little brush to wet them down. A normal person would use a small paintbrush but I'm too cool for that so I used a small brush that I purchased 2 decades ago for flute cleaning. I never cleaned my flute with it so I've been using it in my kitchen for the last 13 years. Cool beans. Music stores have the most awesome tools for cleaning little things. I've purchased several from there. Little brushes for straws, etc. Love them.

I totally recommend making these with kids!

Independence Day!!

These are just basic vanilla cupcakes.  I decided to fill them with a marshmallowy filling.  I found the recipe for the filling somewhere.  It's just regular frosting and marshmallow creme.  Yuck.  Don't like canned frosting.   I suppose I could have made my own but was not energized enough to do it.  

 I filled the cupcakes at home with a piping back.  I didn't have the right kind of tip but it still worked.  

Because the filling was marshmallow, it oozed out a little so we covered the top with more cheap, white frosting and rolled the edges in red sanding sugar.  

 My assistant bakers, Ellie & Ashlyn.  

We topped the cupcakes with super fun umbrellas in patriotic designs.  There were also some flag and stars candies that we bought and put on top.  Not the most creative or clean cut design but still very colorful and fun.

Maci-cakes turns 1

Single fondant flowers on a glazed vanilla cupcake.

Per Jayden's request, Maci had a flower birthday party.
Her cupcakes were pink vanilla with a vanilla glaze and a fondant flower.

I'm going to have to throw in a group picture, of course.

And a couple pics of the birthday girl checking out and eating her cupcake.

Since it took time to color, mold and shape the fondant flowers, I started making them a couple of weeks before. Wilton carries little plastic cups in which to mold your flowers. But there's only one per pack of each size. So I made my own with a 3 layers of foil. They worked great and I still have them although I haven't been motivated to make more of these flowers.



I shaped each flower, then cut away a little bit in between each petal and curled them up. Topped them with a smaller flower-shaped cutout and a little bit of frosting.

I cut out circles of fondant because I thought it would look nice to have a solid white top for my cupcakes. Since my circle cutter wasn't large enough, I rolled them out a little more.

I glazed the top of the cupcakes prior to placing the fondant round on top so it would stick. In the background you can see what they looked like with the fondant circle. I ended up removing them all, though, since they didn't actually look that nice. I know they look nice in the background but I promise there was something wrong with the look.  I think my fondant circles were too thin and they flopped over on the cupcake in a very unattractive way.  I generally like the clean lines of fondant but these weren't that clean.

I ended up glazing them 3 times in order to get enough glaze color.

Ready for travel in my nifty little cupcake holder my sister got for me.

On display at the party. Notice how all the fondant flowers wilted. Yeah, so if you place your hardened fondant shapes on top of a moist cupcake and place them in an an airtight container then will soften. Good to know. Oh well, I still thought they looked great. :)

Basic Flower

I made these to send to Joe's work in honor of Maci's birthday but shared them with Sara instead. :) She was hosting a baby shower the day after hosting Maci's b-day party so it was the least I could do.

So this post is a little disorganized. It's been a while since I posted anything and I forgot that you have to uploade the pictures in reverse order. And I can't seem to move them around once they're uploaded. So there you go.



I used a basic vanilla cake recipe with vanilla frosting from Martha's cupcake book.



I saw this idea in a Martha book. She uses a little ice cream scoop to top her cupcakes then smooshes down the frosting with the back of the scoop. That way you are assured plenty of frosting.
It actually worked pretty well but I wonder if this technique is best used with a big scoop for a lot of frosting.

So many cupcakes, so little time . . .

Each cupcake received a little pink flower and polka dotted liner.

Here they are, ready for travel.

Gingerbread Mango

Gingerbread cupcakes with Mango Buttercream Frosting. My husband's uncle and aunt came by for a visit so my sister (who was also visiting) and I decided to make this award-winning cupcake. Uncle Fred's comment after tasting it said, "this is the best cupcake I've ever eaten!" He said that a couple of times, so I'm going to have to believe him. Makes the incredible amount of effort worth it. Rather than list what I learned, I'd rather summarize the 2 pages of directions it took to make these. That will be at the end of the post. For now, though, be advised: do not attempt to make these unless you have a lot of time and energy on your hands. And if you make them, be prepared to taste yumminess! And I don't even like gingerbread-tasting stuff!

I chose gold wrappers because the crystallized ginger is gold. I thought it turned out pretty well.

The recipe said to brush the tops of the "just baked" cupcakes with a ginger glaze. But I forgot to do that when they first came out of the oven. I did it several minutes later, decided that they weren't getting very glazed, poked tiny holes in them, re-glazed, decided they still weren't moist enough, cut the tops off and then poured the glaze in with a spoon. Talk about moist and yum!

When Jayden saw me poking holes in the cupcakes, he jumped to assistance. He probably poked 30 holes in each one!

If you look closely, you can see how the cupcake looks dry on the inside but more moist near the edges.

Finished product. We garnished the tops with huge chunks of candied ginger which we promptly removed before eating them.

Summary of steps it took to make these:

1. Make batter. Not too hard; used powdered ginger.

2. Make glaze: peel and mince ginger, boil in sugar water for 2 minutes; let sit for 20, remove ginger pieces.

3. Make frosting: Peel and cut 3 mangoes, cook them slowly till they caramelize, push them through a mesh strainer to remove all "hair." Literally the hardest part! Serious forearm workout. Mangoes are hairy!

4. Separate 6 eggs, watch your 4-yr-old experiment with eggs, clean up his mess, beat the eggs.

5. Cut up 1 lb! of butter and beat into the eggs with sugar and alternate mango mix with water.

Okay, so it doesn't sound like much in retrospect. I guess what made it immensely more difficult is that my sister was also whipping up 4 different kinds of gourmet salads at the same time in my little space and on my stove while my 4-year-old was getting into everything. So, I take back my other statement. You don't need a lot of time and energy to make these. You just need to have the kitchen to yourself and put your kids to bed. Then you can enjoy the most tasty mango buttercream frosting - ever! atop very moist gingerbread cupcakes.