Superbowl Desserts

Somehow I've managed to fit in some baking outside of class this past week. Over 15 hours of my week are devoted to baking in class and then I have a full time job, so it's been tough finding outside baking time. Last week for the Superbowl, I made chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches and cupcakes to bring to a party.

The ice cream sandwiches went over huge, and they were relatively easy to make. The night before, I made a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough and put in in the fridge. On Sunday, I scooped out cookies that were approximately the same size and baked them. After they were out of the oven and while they were cooling, I took some ice cream out to soften. My original plan was to make my own ice cream, but I was short on time. Once the ice cream was soft enough, I spooned it onto one cookie and pressed another on top. After they were sandwiched, I rolled the edges in rainbow sprinkles.


The cupcakes were a vanilla base with raspberry jam on the inside. They were all frosted with vanilla and half were rolled in coconut.

Bridal Shower Cupcakes

Last weekend, I was asked to make the cupcakes for my friend Lauren's cousin's bridal shower. Melissa, the bride-to-be, is also the one who ordered the space-themed cupcakes the other week for her fiance.


I made three dozen cupcakes in chocolate, vanilla, and red velvet. All of the cupcakes were frosted in vanilla buttercream. The colors on the shower invitation were sage green and cream. For the chocolate and vanilla, I dyed the frosting sage green, but I didn't think the green looked good on the red cupcakes so I kept it cream-colored.


For the top of each cupcake, I made gold blossom flowers and gold hearts that had the monogram 'M' inside them. I thought the overall look was understated, yet elegant - perfect for a bridal shower.

These Cupcakes Were Out of This World

White chocolate spaceships

Really terrible subject line, I know, but the second order I had last week was for five dozen assorted flavors for a surprise 30th birthday party. The birthday boy is apparently a big fan of all things outerspace related, so I brainstormed with his fiance to come up with cupcakes to reflect this. She was able to find a chocolate mold online of tiny spaceships, and I used this to make white chocolate rockets.

Box of space cupcakes

The flavors of the cupcakes were red velvet, cookie dough, chocolate Oreo, vanilla, and pumpkin spice. On the pumpkin and vanilla, I piped a swirl of dark blue frosting and sprinkled some edible gold glitter and silver dragees over top before putting on the spaceships. I thought these looked pretty cool, although again I had the same issue with the edible glitter migrating all over my face when I accidentally touched it. I looked like Edward stepping into the sun (geeky Twilight reference there...).

Close up of the space cupcakes

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.

Happy Birthday, Kate!

Yesterday was one of my best friends' birthdays, and in honor of it, I made her a cake disguised as a giant margarita. After seeing this cake on Frosted Garden a couple months ago, I knew immediately that I would be making it for Kate's birthday.

Before adding the final layer of frosting

I had seen these giant margarita glasses before at Michael's (craft store) and picked one up a couple weeks ago to prepare for the cake. I had meant to bring my smallest Pyrex bowl home with me from Hoboken to Toms River, but completely forgot it. Fortunately, after rummaging through my grandmother's cabinets, I found a glass bowl that seemed to be the right size.


After deciding on funfetti cake with vanilla frosting (seemed to be an appropriate "birthday flavor"), I baked the cake for what felt like forever. I'm so used to cupcakes and their short baking time that a deep cake like this tested my patience. Especially since I couldn't wait for this to come out of the oven so I could take a nap.

No Kate, you can't drink that

After the cake baked and cooled, I made some vanilla frosting, tinted it light green, and frosted the bottom and sides of the glass. This part was the trickiest because I had to make sure that you didn't see any spatula lines through the glass. I cut the rounded-bottom cake in half, placed the bottom half in the glass, filled in a layer of frosting on top of it, and then topped it off with the other cake half and another layer of frosting to complete the cake. I added a hot pink straw and a slice of lime to complete the look.

Mardi Gras Cupcakes

The last of the cupcakes I made last weekend were for my parents' annual summer party. Their summer party is an event both their friends and my friends look forward to every year. Because my mom loves themes, this year's theme was Mardi Gras. I knew I wanted to do flashy cupcakes to go with the theme. I also knew I was likely going to be hungover from Friday night and needed to keep them simple. Hence, I went with all vanilla cupcakes with edible glitter in green, gold, and purple.

Cupcakes waiting to be set up after they were baked

Sure enough, Saturday morning I was not in good shape. The night before my best friend's brother got married and we all took full advantage of the open bar (sorry Mr. & Mrs. O!). I stumbled out of bed some time in the late morning and got to working. With the oven on, the kitchen was hot and it felt like I was sweating vodka. This was not one of my finest baking experiences.

Top tier of my new stand!

When they were finally done and sprinkled with the glitter, I set them aside for the party later that night. After I got ready, I accidentally dragged my arm through some of the spilt glitter, which quickly migrated all over me, making it look like I applied body glitter. I haven't worn body glitter since 1995, so I was pretty unhappy about that.

Set up in the "desserts room" as my friend used to call our dining room

Morgan's mom made me a new cupcake stand so that was on display at the party. The party was great and the cupcakes were a hit. By the time they actually came out with the rest of desserts, almost half of the cupcakes were already pilfered in secret by the party guests.

Cupcake Jars from Last Week

The cupcakes in jars idea has solved the whole dilemma of shipping cupcakes. Since my friend Dan's request, I've shipped out several more boxes of cupcakes. Last week a friend of mine asked me to send half a dozen to her friend as a gift. The recipient is the co-chair of 80 Million Strong, a coalition advocating for jobs for millenials. Because of this, my friend wanted rainbow cupcakes in the organization's colors - blue, red, orange and green - with green star sprinkles on top.

Cupcakes fresh out of the oven

I may have mentioned this before, but when it comes to my cupcakes, I'm an obsessive perfectionist. I was able to find multicolored star sprinkles, so I picked out the green ones individually much to the astonishment and dismay of my mom who watched this.

Finished cupcakes, before lids

I really liked the way the rainbow cupcakes looked in the clear jars - very pretty. The rainbow jars are something I'd like to experiment more with in the future.

Carefully selected sprinkles

Happy Birthday Jackie!

Today was one of my favorite coworkers' birthdays, and I knew I wanted to make her cupcakes for it. After unsuccessfully trying to stealthily figure out her favorite flavor, I decided to go with just plain vanilla cupcakes. For some reason, when I think birthday cake (or cupcakes), vanilla immediately pops to mind. Probably because it's my favorite flavor. I feel like birthday cupcakes need sprinkles too.

Standard cupcakes on my desk shot

Having no sprinkles in my apartment (yes, I know, it's shocking), I decided to decorate with some of the new tiny silver dragees I bought a while back. Dragees are balls of sugar covered with a metallic coating. There was some confusion with me for a while whether these were safe to eat because on the bottle I first bought it said "For decoration purposes only." After some intense research (aka Wikipedia), I discovered that while the FDA does not consider these edible, they are perfectly safe for you to eat. I have tested this personally myself. Apparently they used to be made with mercury finishing, which is not safe to eat, but they no longer contain mercury. Despite this, they are still banned in California.

The piping tip I used kind of made them look like roses

Have I mentioned my apartment kitchen does not have air conditioning? Halfway through this baking process, I was dying and sure that the frosting was just going to melt clear off the cupcake.

Jackie with the cupcakes!

I then made it to work today with my dozen pink birthday cupcakes with edible silver sprinkles despite also juggling my backpack (yay - my weekend starts today!) and purse and attempting to feed money into the bus machine. I would have sworn I was going to drop the cupcakes upon getting on the bus.

Jackie looked pretty surprised when I handed these over this morning. Hopefully it was a look of good surprise, not a look of "wow, pink is my LEAST favorite color" surprise.

Cupcakes from the Past Weekend

First of all, I'd like to apologize for being negligent about baking & blogging lately. It's summer and it seems like a million other things have been demanding my attention, depriving my friends, family & coworkers of delicious baked goods. What can I say? The call of the bar is just too strong, and when you're getting home as the sun is coming up, getting up a few hours later to slave away in a hot kitchen is just the last thought on your mind.

That being said, I did throw together some cupcakes for a friend's informal gathering by his pool Sunday. I had some leftover Oreo frosting in my freezer and had a craving for chocolate cupcakes. I have no clue what happened with the cupcakes, but when I took them out of the oven, all of the cupcake liners pulled away from the cupcakes. They weren't even the silicone-coated ones I was initially having the problem with. As my guy friends will attest to though, they still tasted pretty good. I used the remaining Oreo frosting for half of them and threw together some vanilla frosting for the rest. I thought it was a pretty solid effort for being so hungover.

Because this weekend is 4th of July though, there will be some baking going on so be sure to check back here next week to see what made it to all the bbqs!

Kick Off to Summer Baking

Being as I only got home from Australia last week and hadn't seen my parents or friends in a while, I hopped on the bus to Toms River at the end of a very long, jet-lagged week at work last Friday. Aside from the 2 dozen I had made Thursday night, I hadn't baked since before Australia and knew I needed to get my baking (and the blog) back on track. Although the weather has been uncooperative, it is essentially summer, and this means two things: heavy shore traffic and fresh summer fruits.

Vanilla bean cupcakes with peach frosting

Wanting to use the latter in cupcake form, I stole the mango that was ripening on our windowsill and made a mango lime curd from it. Having never made curd before, I had no clue what it was supposed to look or taste like. I just kept cooking it hoping I wouldn't burn it or take it off while the eggs were still raw. I'm pretty sure I got it right and being as there were no reported cases of salmonella poisoning, I think it was okay. I baked 3 dozen vanilla bean cupcakes to use as a base. My mom & I then headed off to Stop & Shop to find some peaches and other baking ingredients I had run out of (no surprises there).

Vanilla bean cupcakes filled with mango curd

I pureed the peaches and cooked them stove top to attempt to reduce the water so that my peach frosting would not be watery. No such luck there. It's a pretty tricky balance between adding too many peaches and having too thin icing and adding not enough and not being able to taste them. Half the cupcakes I frosted with the peach frosting and the other half I filled with the curd and topped with vanilla bean buttercream. I had some left over fondant flowers that I decorated the mango cupcakes with.

Inside of the cupcake with curd

I'm not sure how crazy I was about these. I think I just don't like mango, despite trying to force myself to like it by incorporating it into every type of dessert I can think of (sorbet, mousse cake, cupcakes). The next time I make the peach frosting, I think I'll pair it with a peach cake in order to maximize the peach flavor. My mom also suggested using peaches baby food instead of pureeing my own peaches, but this idea sort of grossed me out. I know baby food is just pureed grown-up food, but it still seems weird. I might have to try it and let everyone know how it goes though.

Cupcakes for the Morgan's fam - Mrs. R is making me a cupcake stand!

Under the Sea

Two of my great loves in life are cupcakes (obviously) and The Little Mermaid. When I was younger, I probably watched it hundreds of times and had the cassette tape so I could sing along when I wasn't watching it.

Cupcakes waiting to be eaten

For my birthday this year (in November), my parents gave me a cake decorating toolbox so that I would have my own set of equipment in my new apartment. In the toolbox, there was a package of Little Mermaid cupcake liners. I hadn't used them yet, but on Friday night when I threw together some vanilla cupcakes for guests I was expecting, I decided to liven up the seemingly plain cupcakes with fun liners.

Ariel cupcake liners

These were just vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting (dyed to match Ariel's ocean background), but vanilla is probably my all-time favorite flavor, so I could have eaten all of them. Fortunately (for my waistline), I found people to eat the majority of them (ok, I had one for breakfast today...).

Purple Cupcakes to Match My New Logo

Last Thursday night I decided to make some cupcakes to give to Lauren, the graphic designer who did my logo, when I met her the next day to get the cd of images. I knew I wanted them to be purple to match the logo, and I had some some purple liners that I absolutely love.

Meghan and I are a bit behind in taking down our Easter
decorations...check out the tablecloth

The baking process itself was sort of a debacle. First I took all the baking stuff to Lauren's because I was going to bake there. When I got there, I realized I had left the majority of things I needed at my apartment. So I made her come back with me and I baked intermittently with watching Grey's Anatomy. By the time I got around to making frosting, it was about 11:00 pm and I realized I had no powdered sugar. At that point, no store was still open, so I had to wake up early Friday morning to go out and get sugar to make the frosting before I went to work. I love baking, but that's not quite the way I want to start a Friday morning. After all that though, they ended up coming out pretty. I had some extra white and yellow royal icing flowers, and topped the lavender frosting with them.

Ooh Baby Baby (Cupcakes)

This weekend I had an order that was being delivered to a couple who had just announced they were having a baby. The husband's sister is a friend of my friend Liz, and she wanted to send a dozen vanilla cupcakes with blue and pink frosting to them as a congratulations gift. I had these tiny baby bottle chocolate molds that I had ordered for a baby shower I'm doing this weekend. I topped the cupcakes with frosting, sprinkles, and the chocolate baby bottles.


You can't really see the contrast between the frosting and the baby bottles well enough here, but these were really cute. I really like this design for future baby showers.

First Cupcake Sale!

So my cupcake obsession has recently led to a very small start-up cupcake business. My first real purchase was ordered for delivery in NYC tomorrow. A close friend of mine is leaving her job for another and requested a dozen vanilla cupcakes to be sent to her company's NYC office as a good-will gesture. Just in time, my new business cards came in the mail today! Although, I have mixed feelings about expanding (or starting) in NYC being as delivery is significantly trickier than in the NJ suburbs with a car.

I wish someone would send me cupcakes at work!

Rainbow Cupcakes

My mom has been asking me to make tie dye cupcakes forever. So this weekend while I was home, I decided (a.k.a. was coerced) to finally bake the tie dye cupcakes. The end result ended up being more rainbow than tie dye, so I'm going to call them that. These were really pretty, and they're perfect for Easter/Spring coming up.

Dyed batter

In order to make these, I started out with a white cake batter and dyed it five different colors. For the recipe, I just modified my vanilla recipe, eliminating the things that made it more beige than white - the egg yolks and some of the vanilla. I also used cake flour instead of all purpose flour because it's whiter. It was my first time using cake flour, and I think it gave the cake a really nice texture. In the future, I will definitely be playing around with trying recipes with cake flour vs. all purpose. The drawback to this is that cake flour is more expensive and comes in smaller quantities, and being as baking cupcakes has yet to draw an income for me, the ingredients tend to consume an already embarrassing portion of my discretionary income.

First three colors in

I used Wilton gel food dyes here, but I'm pretty sure that liquid ones would work as well. The color probably just wouldn't be as intense, and you would need to use more of them. I've seen these pretty awesome looking neon gel food colors in the supermarket, but I'm not sure who makes them. I think they would make pretty interesting looking colors.

After I dyed and mixed all the batter, I alternated spooning it into the cupcake trays. Suspiciously, despite it being my mom that wanted these, I was all alone when it came to the huge clean up using 6 different bowls caused. Hm...interesting.

End result - pretty!

Inside look at the cupcake

Because the cake was so colorful, I just paired these with plain vanilla frosting. I wish I had some neon sprinkles to put on top of these, but I think they looked good even without.

The white cake recipe (makes 24 cupcakes):
Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Ingredients:
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
2 C sugar
7 large egg whites
3 C cake flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 C whole milk
2 tsp vanilla

Directions:
1. Cream together butter and sugar
2. Add egg whites and beat well
3. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt
4. Add 1/3 of flour mixture to butter mixture and beat until incorporated. Add milk and vanilla alternately with the flour mixture, ending with the flour
5. Divide batter between into lined cupcake trays
6. Bake for 18-22 minutes, until cake springs back when touched