Rubber Ducky, You're the One . . .

We went to a little baby shower today.  I brought the cupcakes since I'm always looking for an excuse to make some.  

I love polka dots, anytime, anywhere.  Except on my clothes . . . and maybe not in my house decor . . . but everywhere else.  Like in cupcake wrappers and wallets and little girl skirts and socks and hair bands and balloons and napkins . . .

I cut out a bunch of little m's the day before so they could dry but the next morning they were still pliable.  So I heated the oven for a couple of minutes (maybe 4-5 minutes) then turned it off and stuck the m's inside with the oven light on.  At first they looked like they were getting softer but after I took them out they hardened pretty quickly.  

M for Baby Miles.  

I added mini chocolate chips to the vanilla-bean cupcakes.  Yum.

These ducks were pretty easy to make.  I swiped the idea from the another website.  Click here to see the original.  I didn't follow her directions for making them; I just liked the ducky idea.  She uses frosting and food coloring for the eyes and beak.  I just used my Food Writer pens.  Seems much easier.  

I was very pleased with these.  So fun to make!  And so cute!

I love the pearls.  They add such a nice touch.  

The only cupcake left.  

Since I made 32 cupcakes we had quite a few left over after the party.  We were at a park so I went around handing out cupcakes to random kids.  The other ladies in our party thought that was hilarious and outrageous that these kids were accepting cupcakes from some strange cupcake lady.  Now, just to be clear, I always asked the parents if they wanted their child to have a cupcake.  Not a single parent said no.  I had a couple of kids who said "no thanks" but then their parents would encourage them to eat one.  "Come one, honey.  Are you sure?  Did you see what they looked like?"  

That just cracked me up.  I think I would have probably declined a stranger offering home-baked goods which makes it so much funnier to me.  I guess I look safe.  

Garden Variety

We had a couple of my son's classmates over for lunch yesterday.  I thought they'd have fun playing with fondant.  As you can see from above, they did some adorable stuff.  

The cake was Trader Joe's Vanilla bean.  And because I only had 4 T of butter in the house, I softened it and mixed it with a bunch of powdered sugar and a can of marshmallow creme.  Don't ask me why I had marshmallow creme; I'm not entirely sure.  But now I don't have it so it's just as well.  It was tasty frosting but since I over-heated the butter it was a little too soft.  Very sticky.  But very yummy.  

So next time you feel that marshmallow creme is unhealthy, try adding butter and sugar to it, then the original won't seem so bad.

We had 3 moms, 3 girls and 1 boy working on these.  The two younger boys preferred to play outside.  2 of the girls did a great job.  My 4-year-old, however, kneaded that fondant until it was as soft as peanut butter.  Then she decided she needed to eat it since it was too soft.  Oh boy!

This cupcake is a combined effort.  Andrea made the sweet pea, Kadence made the strawberry base, Liz made the strawberry top, and I dotted the berry with a food writer.

The original plan was to make ladybugs but then I tried to make a caterpillar that ended up looking like peas.  So then we made peas and strawberries and even a radish and some lettuce.  They're so cute!  

Of course, I wouldn't let them eat them until I had snapped up some pictures.  

Maci decorated her own, full of "peas" and one strawberry.

These were super fun to make.  I just know I'm going to have to make more this summer.  They're so easy too!  Maybe I can make a 4th of July variety with fondant blueberries.  Nah, I'd rather use real blueberries. But I love the radish idea and sweet pea, maybe even some carrots.  Oh my goodness, I want to make some more today!

Pink-a-Frilly Party

Our daughter turned 4 last week so we had her bday party yesterday. It was pink.  Very pink.  It was princess and fairy and pinkalicious and frilly and all things pink.

The cupcakes were vanilla bean from Trader Joe's and filled with Raspberry filling.  They were topped with 7-minute frosting, rolled in pink sprinkles with a round red ball on top.  

The colors in the pictures is not accurate to the colors before our eyes.  I had to adjust a lot of levels and still couldn't get it right.  The cupcake above looks almost purple but I assure you, it was very pink.

Yeah, this totally looks wrong as far as color is concerned.  My only camera is the iPhone camera so I borrowed the camera of a friend to take my pics.  His camera made a HUGE difference but I still had problems with light because my house is so dark.  It seems that I will either need to move to a glass house or buy a 2-million-dollar lens and 3-trillion-dollar fancy flash in order to get decent pictures in my house.  In any case, I'm still pleased with the result since the iPhone camera would have likely made me cry.  

My house is very, very dark.  The light you see in this picture is an indication of my friend's good camera and some Snapseed app adjustments.  

My little princess's name tag.

My little princess, looking a little purple, but still cute.  

I don't believe my daughter has the capacity to stand still, hence the blur.

I loved the stars.  They were simple paper mache stars from the fabric store.  I painted the stems white and the stars pink then glittered them with Martha's fabulous glitter.  Then attached some ribbon.

Okay, they're looking a little more pink here. 

I made pink tutus for the princesses to wear.  Just a little elastic band then cut tulle into strips and knot it around the elastic.  It wasn't too hard but it did take more time than I anticipated to make 10 skirts.  I had a couple of friends help too.  But, oh, they look so cute hanging up in a row.  

Okay, here we go with the stars again.  I loved them.  Yeah, so this is a cupcake blog but this is not a cupcake post.  It's really just an opportunity to put up pics of the party.  I have no other method of sharing pics like these. 

A darling little princess named Sophie.

We scattered some photos of Maci's last 4 years throughout the food tables.  

The many faces of Maci.

The cake:  Chocolate cake with cherry filling and pink roses. My mom piped the roses.  But in the rush we ended up using store-bought frosting.  Never use store-bought frosting for piping.  NEVER, I say!  It looked good for about 5 minutes, then started to literally melt off the cake.  Within 20 minutes, the remaining uneaten half of the cake completely slid off it's layers.  

My sweetie with her princesses.  

If the princess wants to sit, I guess the princess gets to sit. . .

Again with the stars!  Ooh, I just had a birthday party idea!  Stars!  Planets, constellations!  I totally have to do that for my son's party in September.  I better get started. . .

Not-so-Mellow Yellow

 I made mini lemon cupcakes to share at church for my daughter's 4th birthday.  

Vanilla bean cupcake batter from Trader Joe's.  Very good boxed mix!  You add melted butter and milk, not water and oil like the yucky store-bought mixes.

I scooped out a little bit of the cupcake and added lemon curd.  Good stuff.  Yum.

I topped them with 7-minute frosting, rolled tops in yellow sprinkles and finished them off with a little lemon jelly bean.  They were very cute but so yellow!

I toned down the saturation in the pictures.  They were so bright they hurt my eyes!  The Sun!  It burns!

Now here's where I went wrong:  I thought it would be fun to a little bit of lemon extract to the fluffy, fat-free meringue-like frosting.  So, that turned out to be a bad idea.  You know those cleaning solutions with lemon scent?  Okay, now spray a little lemon-scented cleaner on your cupcake and then eat it.  I think you get the picture.  

I observed a couple of little kids bite into the cupcake, squish up their face like they just ate a worm, and exclaim with pain, "I don't like it!"  I laughed at myself, of course, but felt bad for the kids.  On the plus side, I doubt they will try to ingest any yellow cleaning solutions from now on.  That lemon on the label of the floor cleaner no longer appeals to the lemonade-loving kids.  I have saved the children from future poisoning.  I shall go down in history as a hero.  

Next time: I will leave out the industrially-produced lemon extract, add some lemon zest to the cake mix and let the lemon curd do most of the talking.  

The Golden Egg

The Angry Birds

Okay, so there's no eggs on any of these cupcakes.  But I chose gold for the cupcake wrappers and wanted to make sure that the connection was made.  

For those not familiar with Angry Birds (aka, cave dwellers), they are birds that are tossed through the air with slingshots to attack the green pigs that have stolen their golden egg.  

My precious 7-year-old wanted an Angry Birds birthday party last September.  (Yes, I know that was 7 months ago).  But it's never too late to display cupcake pictures.  

These were probably one of the most satisfying cupcakes I've ever made.  I thoroughly enjoy working with fondant.  It always looks so smooth and finished when it's done.  It's really just like playing with playdoh.  And who doesn't like playing with playdoh?  

Here are some close-ups of the birds.  The eyes could have been made with fondant and a black food-writer but it was just easier to buy the eyeballs from the baking section of the grocery store.  

This guy was my favorite.  I know he's supposed to be like the bad guy or something but he's just so cute.

I considered leaving the red out from under his eye but he just didn't look right without it.

This yellow guy is supposed to have squinty eyes so I chopped off part of his eyeball with my chef's knife.

The center guy is black but check out the beak on the green guy.  That's the boomerang bird or something like that.  That was a very large beak.

Here's another little sweetie enjoying a cupcake at the party.  Her brother is in the background munching on his.