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.

Pandamania

My son's teacher had a Panda-themed classroom this year.  And since I look for any excuse to make cute cupcakes, I made these pandarific cupcakes.  Oh brother.  

I used upside-down dark chocolate chips from Trader Joe's for the ears since they're larger than average chocolate chips.  Upside-down regular chocolate chips for the eyes, topped with eyeballs from the baking aisle in the grocery store and a mini chocolate chip for the nose. I piped black frosting for the mouth.  

Oh, yeah, and the topping is white frosting rolled in caster sugar (that's a super fine sugar, smaller and more dull than sanding sugar).  The caster sugar gave them a fuzzy look.  I didn't want a glossy-looking panda face.  I'm sure the 1st & 2nd graders wouldn't care if his face was green but I care cause, well, I guess because I make these cupcakes for myself.  I don't exactly eat them but they're my fun and my chance to let creative juices run free. 

My cutie with his load of cupcakes.

First day of school.  Found his name.  

The cool bulletin boards in the classroom.

This teacher has a special place in my heart.  I did my 6 months of student-teaching with her about 12 years ago.  She's a great teacher!  Very creative.  I love her.  I even wrote a book for her and for her students.  It's available on Create Space and Amazon.  She's handing the books out to the kids tomorrow.  They're going to love them.  Okay, so this has nothing to do with my blog but I'm excited about it too.  Every student in the class is mentioned in the book at least 4 times.  It's written in the spirit of Flat Stanley.  Crazy, ridiculous book but the kids loved it.  

Remember, you should never judge a book by it's cover, especially when I've sketched the picture on the cover.  Suffice it to say, I'm not an artist.  

Links to the book:

Create Space https://www.createspace.com/4187659

Amazon  http://www.amazon.com/Stan-Manley-manly-meets-Cypress/dp/1482642689/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1366258349&sr=8-2&keywords=stan+manley