7th Birthday Cupcakes

When I was a kid, one of my favorite people in the whole world was my cousin Laura. She and my Aunt Jeanne Marie (whose wedding cake I just did last month) always let me hang out with them, even though I was 13 years younger than them.


A few weeks ago, Laura contacted me to see if I could make cupcakes for her daughter's 7th birthday. I can't believe she has a 7 year old already!!! I feel like I was just 7, hanging out with her and my aunt.


For her birthday, she wanted chocolate cake with frosting and "girly" decorations in her favorite colors - purple, green and blue. When I went to get started on the fondant decorations, I realized that all of my flower cutters were at my parent's house. Fortunately, I had just bought a set of butterfly cutters that I had at my apartment. I cut out butterflies from the purple fondant I rolled and also hand cut 7's. To add a little extra shine, I painted them with a purple luster dust paint (luster dust mixed with lemon extract).


I dyed the vanilla buttercream green and blue and piped it into a swirl on the cupcakes. I sprinkled on some tiny silver dragees and placed the butterflies and 7's on them. Considering I had almost no tools to work with, I was really pleased with the way these turned out.

My Aunt's Wedding Party - Part 2

When I woke up the Saturday morning (at the crack of dawn because the kids were running around), I discovered my aunt had left the window open in the kitchen, and the freezing cold night/morning air had dried out the cupcakes a bit (initially I thought they might be frozen). This was a little disappointing, but they weren't too bad. I mixed some cream cheese frosting, covered the cake in it, and then rolled out white fondant to cover the cake with. The fondant amused my cousins to no end; I gave them each a small piece to play with. I think I may have inspired some future bakers. I really need practice when it comes to covering cakes in fondant. There was a pretty large crease in the back of the cake. Given that this was only my 3rd attempt at a fondant-covered cake though, I'd say it wasn't too bad.

After the cake was covered, I set it aside and piped the frosting onto the cupcakes. On each cupcake, I placed one of the flowers I had made the night before. Then, I painted the cake with sparkly white luster dust and "glued" on the flowers and S with royal icing. Overall, the cake did not come out looking too bad. As long as you were looking at it from the right angle (the back was sort of a mess).

One thing I would do over would be to pipe a ring of buttercream around the edge of the cake layers before filling it with the mousse, which was way too soft and got squeezed out of the cake with each additional layer that was put on top. I should have thought to do this in the first place. I also can't wait to take a class to improve my fondant capabilities. I'd love to do more cakes in addition to cupcakes.

My Aunt's Wedding Party - Part 1

This past weekend, my aunt threw a party to celebrate her recent marriage. She and her husband had a tiny ceremony in North Carolina with just the two of them and my aunt's two kids, so she wanted to have a larger party to celebrate with her friends and family. I immediately offered to bake the cake and cupcakes. After work on Friday, I made the very long, traffic-ridden journey out to Effort, PA where she lives. If you've never been there, it's really quite an experience. When she asked where I was en route, my response was "Well I just passed a fireworks store and an ammo supply shop."

My painting workstation

My aunt is not a baker and her kitchen is virtually devoid of any baking equipment or ingredients. Earlier in the week, I had given her a grocery list of things I would need, and I brought a few things of my own like a mixer and fondant. Unfortunately, shortly after I began baking, my mixer spazzed out and broke. I was pleasantly surprised when my aunt pulled out her own hand mixer. I don't know what I would have done if she didn't have one. Mix things by hand? How did people bake before the introduction of motors for mixers?

Close-up of the flowers

The first thing to go into the oven was a 6 inch round vanilla cake. I set aside the leftover vanilla batter, mixed some chocolate, and prepared the marble cupcakes. Once the cake was cooling and the marble cupcakes were in the oven, I began mixing one of my favorites - red velvet. I've talked here before about my love of red velvet; to me it's such a classic, awesome flavor. In the event that I one day get married myself, I want a red velvet cake or cupcakes (baked by me of course). My younger cousins were shocked to see the bright red batter though. After declaring it looked like something off a horror movie set, I don't think I would have been able to bribe them to eat it.

Unfrosted cake - the filling spilling out

After everything was baked and set aside, I rolled out some fondant and cut the flowers that would adorn the cake and cupcakes. To expedite the process, my aunt painted them with a sapphire-colored luster dust while I "glued" on the edible pearl centers. Her new last name begins with 'S' (as did her former last name), and she requested a monogram on the cake. I formed the S out of a rolled snake of fondant, set it aside to dry, and painted that with the luster dust as well. After filling the cake with chocolate mousse I had prepared earlier and fresh raspberries, I covered it with plastic wrap and stored it for the night in the refrigerator.

This post is pretty long, so I'm going to split it into two and post the rest tomorrow. To be continued...

Happy Birthday, Eric!

Last week it was my brother Eric's 23rd birthday. If you read the comments on this blog, he's the one always talking about the calorie content of cupcakes or making fun of our little sister, Melissa, for eating too many. See, Melissa and I are normal, cupcake-loving people, but Eric's strange and doesn't eat really anything that's bad for you. His ideal cupcake would probably be a mix of chicken, tuna, and protein powder.

Workspace around 1:00 am

Having decided that was not going to be my ingredient list, I went for a banana cupcake with peanut butter frosting. And I used no butter. Which is no small feat for me being as I use that stuff by the pounds. I also reduced the sugar in the cake. This was just about the "healthiest" cupcake I've baked yet. I also made a dozen regular vanilla for the people who wouldn't prefer the protein cupcakes.

Finished cupcakes

I really don't like bananas, but the banana cupcake wasn't bad at all. It definitely had more of a muffin texture, but that's probably due to the absence of butter. The combo of peanut butter and banana was good; each flavor held its own nicely.

Close-up of the suits cupcakes

Because Eric was having his birthday celebration down in Atlantic City, I went with a poker theme for the cupcakes. I covered the peanut butter banana cupcakes in rolled green fondant to look like a poker table and topped them with edible fondant poker chips I hand made and painted with gold luster dust. The vanilla cupcakes were covered in white fondant and topped with a card suit cut out of red and black fondant. I actually bought those fondant cutters about two months ago in preparation for these cupcakes. I also found tiny suit sprinkles at NY Cake and used those on the white cupcakes as well.

Poker chip cupcakes

All of this baking and decorating went down around midnight last Thursday. By the time I finished, I was exhausted and covered in corn starch (you roll the fondant on it).

About to sing Happy Birthday

Fortunately, when Eric and his friends returned from Atlantic City, most of them had won. It would not have been good to have a cupcake reminder of the big losses suffered at the poker tables.

Pretty Cupcakes

Recently I was asked to put together a "sampler" of cupcakes for various events - Sweet 16s, weddings, bar/bat mizvahs, etc in order to show what I'm able to do. I used some designs I've already done and also came up with some new. This post is going to be mainly pictures (which I learned this weekend is all some people look at anyway!). Most of these pictures were taken around 4:00 in the morning when I finished baking, so the quality of the photography is a bit lacking.

The final 24 that made the cut

Cupcake Flags!

Cupcake for a Sweet 16

Modified Golf Cupcakes to include a sand trap and water hazard


That glitter is edible!!

This one was my favorite

The woman's name I was meeting with was Lori. Not sure how

this would work out for longer names.

There's a lot going on on this cupcake, but I think it's pretty

Wedding Anniversary Cupcakes - Completed!

Finished cupcake painted with gold luster dust with a fondant flower

Wednesday after working a full day and a two hour commute down to Toms River, I was finally ready to start these four dozen 50th wedding anniversary cupcakes that were being picked up the next morning. Just in time, my 100 cupcake boxes had arrived that afternoon. Unfortunately, I had left several things I needed at my apartment in Hoboken. Being as I'm not the most organized person, baking out of two separate locations is going to be a challenge for me, and I'll probably end up with 10 of everything at some point. After getting all the cupcakes baked, my mom and I ran to Michael's craft store to pick up the missing things I needed.

Engineering my new cupcake boxes - I love that they have the
holders to keep each cupcake in place

There's still a problem with my parents' oven...I brought home my oven thermometer, and saw that the oven is fluctuating in temperature from 330-400. This may not seem like a big difference, but when you're baking cakes and cupcakes, it's extremely important to have an even temperature. Otherwise you end up with cupcakes that either won't rise or overflow. I also need to just work on filling the cupcake liners with less, especially in Toms River where I know the baking temperature is going to be a problem.

Me, covered in corn starch. Apparently while rolling out the fondant, I have a tendency
to wipe my hands on my pants...I need to start wearing one of the aprons I have

When I first started rolling out the fondant, embossing, covering the cupcakes and painting, I thought it was going to take forever. This is a really time-consuming way to decorate a cupcake, and when you have 3 done and 45 left to go, it feels like you will never be finished. Fortunately I got into a nice rhythm and had a baking assistant (my mom), and was able to finish them so that I could get some sleep before having to be up at 6 am to get to my real job.

Cupcakes all ready to be picked up

I wasn't able to be there the next morning when these were picked up, so I had to rely on my mom for feedback. She said the woman who ordered them was extremely happy with them, which is great. This was only my second time baking larger orders under pressure , and I think it's going to get easier (or at least maybe I will get less nervous) every time.

I'm heading back down to Toms River today for Easter and am baking 3 different types of cupcakes (rainbow, lemon, and coconut), a cake (to practice my fondant abilities), and a cupcake bouquet. Assuming no major baking catastrophes, I'll have posts up of all of these next week.

Potential Wedding Anniversary Cupcakes

A friend of my mom's asked me about cupcakes for her parents' 50th wedding anniversary which is taking place in North Carolina in a couple weeks. Because I was already baking today for the baby shower, I told her that I would put together a few samples. She didn't really give me much to go with, but the 50th anniversary is a gold anniversary, so I started with that and tried out some things I've been wanting to. I had some fondant and luster dusts at home, so I covered the tops with embossed fondant and then painted on the luster dust. For two of them, I painted the whole top with iridescent white and the imprint with gold. I liked them, but they're definitely for someone who was looking for something ornate. And they were pretty time consuming. For the other two, I painted them with a pinkish champagne color and topped them with some dried fondant flowers I had painted gold. These were the winning pick for the actual anniversary party with some slight modifications.

The winning cupcake

I'm really loving fondant. You can do so much more with it than regular buttercream, and it's been way easier to work with than I thought it was going to be. I don't think I'm quite ready to bust out any Ace of Cake-style cakes just yet, but I'm definitely getting a feel for it, and I have a ton of ideas I want to try out. The taste is eh, but I don't think it detracts from the overall flavor and definitely adds to the overall appeal.

Embossed and hand-painted