Basic chocolate-on-chocolate action cake with yellow fondant cut outs
My coworkers and I were throwing a surprise birthday party for the audit director and since it was a milestone event, I offered to make a small cake for our group. I was told he liked chocolate, so double chocolate devil’s food cake with chocolate frosting it was. I rolled out some fondant and punched out “HAPPY 40TH”, but did a not-so-great job placing it on the cake. I should have just taken the time to make more frosting to pipe out “Happy birthday” like a sane person instead of driving myself nuts trying to place fondant letters and still doing a crap job of it. Ugh. I didn’t really put much into decorating the rest of the cake since the baking and frosting-making took some time, so I admit this wasn’t one of my best-looking pieces. =( Oh well. What can you do in one short evening?
I brought this into work and my coworker and I bought candles for the cake. (We also spent our lunch scouring the area for birthday presents. FYI: if you’re looking for decent photo frames around Penn Station-Herald Square, your only option is KMart… which is absurd.) Unfortunately, I didn’t snap a shot with all the candles lit up; as soon as the birthday guy got the cake, the candles were blown out and cake was immediately divvied and distributed. Everyone said it was good, and the director had two pieces in the matter of minutes so I think it came out well. haha
Afterwards, we all went to a bar and met up with former AP IAD members, and Vin even came down to hang with my new coworkers. It was a really good time. I think I’m liking this job. =)
I haven’t baked since the holidays (thanks to a much-needed vacation, celebrating my birthday, and going through… comment on-dit… career advancing changes =), and while it was a nice break, it felt comforting to hear the whirring of the mix monster again. Vin and I went his parents to visit his dad’s cousin’s family for dinner last week (and to be amazed by his KITT car, extensive Superman memorabilia, and pics from a Harryhausen exhibit–SO awesome!) and I figured it would be a good idea to bring some dessert for our gracious and super cool hosts.
Brown sugar & spice cupcakes with cocoa-bourbon-pecan filling and chocolate frosting
Flipping through this booze-based baking book, I was inspired by this cocoa-spice cupcake recipe. I crushed up some vanilla wafers and mixed them with bourbon (yay!), sugar, pecans, and cocoa then rolled out little balls of liquored goodness. The boozy bonbons tasted delicious on their own. While I let those harden in the fridge, I mixed a nutmeg-allspice and brown sugar cake batter. I filled cupcake cups halfway with the batter and stuck a ball in each one; I mean, what better surprise to find in a cupcake than a nutty chocolate bourbon ball? Since I wasn’t familiar with this recipe, my first batch was a LITTLE overdone. I made a couple more trays and shortened the baking time. I think those came out better, but I was still concerned about them being a tiny bit dry.
Inside the tasty cupcake
While the cupcakes cooled, I made some fresh chocolate buttercream frosting. With a swooping swirl of icing and pecans perfectly placed on the cakes, I packed up a couple dozen and away we went for dinner. The feedback was pretty good. (phew!) The following day I brought some of the extras to the office to impress the new coworkers. I THINK my job’s pretty secure =)
BTW, good things are in the works this year! For one, I’m baking some special treats for this event and it’s for a great cause. If you’re in the NYC area for March 24, I totally suggest buying tix for it and going. And since it’s the lucky year of the dragon (and b/c I’m @ “that age” where everyone is getting hitched/having babies/etc.), I’ve got some wedding projects coming up I’m super psyched about. Keep an eye out on my site for fun pics!
Guess who had a full day of work and was still behind on writing cards and wrapping presents and still had not made Christmas Eve dessert by Friday afternoon on December 23? MEEEEE!!! That break I had the week before was more like a short gasp of air; there was so much to do @ the office before everyone else was trying to escape for the holidays. Fun. When I got home I couldn’t even think about making dessert @ the time and just rushed to wrap all the gifts for Vin’s family and tried to @ least sort out gifts for my family. I took a break to give Vin the rest of his presents (super awesome knife cufflinks, shoes, tickets to see pro bull riders @ MSG, Japanese thermal long johns). Our romantic pre-Christmas dinner @ Maloney and Porcelli was my gift to him the day before (I don’t care if you’re vegetarian; you MUST get the crackling pork shank!). Vin gave me mine super early: I got a second 6-quart KitchenAid stand mixer (I have now christened them Thing 1 and Thing 2) and some neat baking pans a week before Christmas =P
I woke up early on Christmas Eve to get started on the cake balls. I had a clear vision in mind for this Christmas dessert, and it was basically making really fancy, hand-decorated cake balls that were to resemble ornaments on this wooden tree stand I bought from Godiva last year. The tree came with wrapped chocolate truffles, but those are long gone and all that remains is this simple wooden display. Although these aren’t my favorite things to do, I admit I’m getting quite adept @ making cake balls now. Plus, I had some leftover cupcakes from last weekend, and what better way to salvage dry cupcakes but to process them into cake ball dust?
White cake ball with red and green Christmas trees
I took out a Godiva truffle to gauge what size to roll out the balls (1 Tbsp scoop) so that the wooden tree display would cup the balls ever so snugly. I had a bit of candy coating leftover from last month’s wedding favor order to cover a few balls, and broke open a package of white candy coating to make different colored “ornaments”. I made the white balls first one @ a time: dipping, setting them to dry, artfully arranging Christmas tree sprinkles, and wash, rinse, repeat with the remainder of the yellow and green coating. The candy coating dries rather quickly (man, I thought the white coating was fickle… no way, the green coating dries super fast!), so I couldn’t just dip a few balls @ once or the decorations would never stick. And I couldn’t just throw all the sprinkles on or it would look like crap. These were delicate, handcrafted, ornate cake balls with a coating that dried pretty damn quick. I’d liken this to decorating a Fabergé egg, but on speed. haha
The three final designs were: white balls with red and green Christmas trees, yellow balls with clear/red/green sugar sprinkles, and green balls with white snowflake sprinkles. I WANTED to make a fourth design: red balls with crushed peppermint sprinkles, but my downfall was not having actual red candy chips. I thought I was being sooooo innovative and smart by adding red food coloring to the white coating after making several white balls… but I overheated the candy by just a tad and didn’t have enough time to fix that mess. It was 1055 am and Vin was already hovering over me to pack this up and get ready to go, so I just brought a not-so-Christmassy variety pack of balls. I mean, yellow? Come on now… =/
Hand-decorated cake ball Christmas tree
We set it up @ the T house and it did look nice. Someone said it was a really great cake ball dispenser and Vin’s crazy cute nephew Patrick was very adamant on having a “gween ball wif white snowfwakes!!!” I made extra balls to refill the empty spots on the tree and hoarded some to bring to my parents’ house for Christmas Day. My mom, dad, and grandma had never had one before and said they were good, my sister and her boyfriend were quite familiar with my baked good experiments, and my brother just popped the whole thing in his mouth, grinned, and ate it. =P
And with that, I give you the end of Christmas 2011 baking. (Phew!)
Things @ the office are JUST starting to slow down as we’re approaching that holiday lull where nothing gets done b/c frankly… everyone I need to harass work w/is out on vacation. Normally, I like being super active and multi-tasking, but it was getting a bit out of control. The breathing time is quite welcome b/c I needed to get my crap together for the holidays, too!
I’ve been staying up late and using ANY free time I have @ home to organize gifts to ship out to faraway friends and family and addressing our awesome, one-of-a-kind Christmas postcards using Vin’s photography. I figured we should have two sets made: one for “adults” and one completely nonsensical, weird set for people who are OK with our unique sense of humor =) I spent a LOT on stamps and shipping gifts this past week, but thanks to baking orders and selling stuff on eBay, it wasn’t a big deal. After bypassing the ridiculous line @ the post office on Saturday to send out 10 boxes of gifts to friends and family (thank youuuu, Click ‘n Ship!), Vin and I went to the supermarket to pick up ingredients for baking time.
chocolate minis with red peppermint frosting and vanilla minis with green vanilla frosting
This weekend’s order was very important. A very nice woman found my site online and asked if I could make cupcakes as Christmas presents to deliver to her loved ones in LI since she wasn’t able to visit them for the holidays. I definitely couldn’t say no. We decided on making a mix of chocolate cupcakes with red peppermint frosting and vanilla cupcakes with green vanilla frosting. I made a dozen minis to deliver to each house and added Christmas sprinkles to make it more festive.
chocolate minis with eggnog frosting and chocolate frosting
Then I also made a bunch of chocolate cupcake minis with chocolate frosting and eggnog frosting. And then meticulously placed more Christmas sprinkles on these, too. (I seriously love being able to use all these cute sprinkles!)
I made some extra chocolate minis and brought in leftover eggnog frosting to bring to co-workers. I didn’t have time to decorate before bringing them in to the office, so I rushed to squeeze every last drop of frosting on the cupcakes and put one Christmas tree sprinkle on each during my lunch break. There were a lot of gift baskets and store-bought baked goods out in the office, but I’m glad everyone still had room for my cupcakes. =)
PS. After I take the baked cupcakes out and let them cool, I dump them out on cooling racks and then line then up to make room for more batches. As I was straightening up the chocolate minis, I saw that one of the cupcakes kind of looked like it had my initials. I swear I didn’t try to make it look like that! I thought I was seeing things so I showed Vin and he said, “Yeah… it DOES look like there’s ‘KT’ on it!” oooooooohhh… it’s a sign I was meant to do this, huh.
I completely forgot about posting this. I made a TON of cream puffs for Thanksgiving over 2 weeks ago. I guess it was glossed over since it’s been crazy @ work and the photos are forgettable and this wasn’t a big deal; I’ve made these before. Ain’t nothin’ special.
I was on a puff-making spree the morning of Vin’s family’s Thanksgiving dinner and made hundreds of little puffs. I just kept going and going and all my racks were overfilling and I lost count after 250. I made this many with the intention of bringing some for the T house dessert, then bringing them for my family’s post-turkey dinner on Saturday, and then doling out the rest to coworkers.
Pistachio puffs
I made pistachio filling for the T house puffs. No, pistachio filling is not naturally green; a bit of food coloring gives it that lovely processed pastel shade. And there were bits of nuts in there, too. I also made chocolate filling and vanilla filling, but as usual, Vin likes to get to his parents’ house early so I didn’t have time to change tips and refill pastry bags to do multiple flavors. I REALLY wanted to construct a tower of puffs (croquembouche), but there definitely wasn’t any time for that. Meh.
TONS o' puffs
I brought about 60-70 puffs to the T house and brought along my nice cake stands to assemble them, but I was preoccupied with our new little niece for a few hours. She was so cute and peaceful sleeping on me that I didn’t want to move and wake her up to arrange cream puffs and hold her @ the same time, so Vin’s mom set them all up on one platter. There were extra puffs so Mom T froze them. (I was told she took them out to eat 2 weeks after Thanksgiving and they held up well and were still good.)
For my parent’s house, I packaged the dry, baked puffs in a bag and didn’t fill them till we got to the house. I didn’t want the puffs to be soggy. And it was a much more relaxed setting so I just sat down @ the dining table and took my time filling the assortment of pistaschio, chocolate, and vanilla while my siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, and my dad eyeballed the process and commented on the “messy ones that needed to be eaten right away.” hahaha It was a nice sampling dish… I think I made about 80 for my mom’s family feast and they were all gone by the time we left.
plate o' puffs - chocolate, vanilla, and pistachio
And I REALLY wanted to bring some for my coworkers and teammates since we were finishing up a big group project and this would have been a nice treat, but I just didn’t have time to make more filling before then. So frustrating. Now I have another 150+ empty, frozen puffs in my freezer, so maybe I can make a small caramel croquembouche tower for later. In addition to the awesomely fun idea I have in mind for the Christmas… stay tuned…
Sometimes, a girl needs a good challenge. Something she really needs to do b/c it’s fun and rewarding even though she barely has time to breathe… or b/c she’s just mental. I’d like to think this is a little of both =)
Mardi Gras cake ball set
A while back, one of my friends referred her engaged friend to me and suggested that I do her wedding favors. (To be consistent, R also recommended me to do the baked goods for the bridal shower.) Her friend was planning a Mardi Gras-themed wedding and wanted party favors that could double as escort cards. I got really excited about being hired to do this and had sooo many ideas, I kinda went overboard in making suggestions. haha But the lovely bride-to-be and I finalized the favors to be cake balls. This would probably be best option for easy transport and set up since the guest list had about oh, I don’t know…like, 400 guests. Other options would have been nice, but just for the sake of making things easier for organizing and alphabetizing purposes and having gone through last minute things on my wedding day (i.e., sorting escort cards while getting my hair done an hour before the ceremony), I wanted to make things go as smoothly as possible for her. So we decided to have cake balls and small cube favor boxes and labels.
On off weekends, Vin and I catch up on all the shows we missed during the week and one day, we got reeled into watching “Along Came Polly” with Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston. It’s not a must-see, but there’s a memorable scene where the man-of-a-million-voices Hank Azaria shows up as this jacked up scuba instructor in a Speedo with a super thick French accent who tries to assure Ben Stiller nothing will happen to his new wife. He’s like, “Louban [Ben Stiller’s character’s name is “Reuben”], look to me in my eyeballlluuuuhhh, I promEESE you I take care of LEEsa…” When Vin imitates Hank Azaria and says that line, it makes me laugh and I was reminded of it when I made these cake balls.
I wanted to make these last weekend for Halloween but just didn’t have time. There was too much going on @ work for both of us and we just weren’t that into it this year. No parties, no dressing up… total lameness, I know. We didn’t get that many trick-or-treaters last year, so I only bought one regular bag of candy in anticipation for the holiday. Vin and I didn’t get home till close to 8 on Monday night and all the kids were done trolling for sugar by then, and since no one showed up we’re stuck with a bowl full of Whoppers, Reese’s PB cups, Take 5s, KitKats, and Jolly Rancher lollipops.
bloodshot crazy eyes
We had some time yesterday before heading to the T house so I decided I’d try out these eyeballs. Just b/c Halloween is over doesn’t mean I can’t still make weird cake balls, dammit! I wanted to test out some sizes and designs for cake balls anyway b/c I have a wedding favor order to fulfill and wanted to triple check they’d fit in the favor box with a fondant design on them, too. I took out some homemade fondant and colored and rolled tiny chunks of it, then cut out circles for the iris and pupil pieces. I made an assortment of brown, green, blue and yellow eye parts, and as soon as I put the brown eye pieces on the cake balls, I started giggling to myself. I laid out the pieces to make a crazy yellow eyeball and hand painted some gel for the bloodshot eye vessels. That made me chuckle, too. I made a bunch of different colored eye sets looking in all different directions, and I kept cracking myself in the kitchen.
Cake eyeballs and eyeball parts
Vin hears the giggling and thinks I’m chatting with my sister online and we’re making silly jokes. It’s almost time to leave (he likes getting to his parents’ super early so he can play with the dog) and he comes into the kitchen while I’m still laughing to myself and he’s all exasperated and goes, “Baby, you’re TOTALLY not ready–oh cool!!!” when he sees what I’ve been working on. Then he heads straight back into the office to get his camera to take pics. I grab his 80s computer guy/pedophile glasses and put the yellow googley eyes behind them and I’m laughing hysterically @ my creation while Vin’s snapping away. It just looks too funny AND freaky @ the same time. I go and get my glasses and put the other eyes behind them. They look creepy, but I think it’s so hilarious and I’m so proud of myself b/c they DO look realistic. I brought them over to the T house and Vin’s fam thought the balls were fun, too. His mom looked @ me like I was nuts for making creepy edible eyeballs, but she smiled and it was a loving look that said “no wonder my son loves you.” <3
Fleur de lis cake ball
I also did a few quick prototypes for the wedding favors, and they came out just the way I wanted so I was extra psyched about this cake ball experiment. =)
Coconut banoffee pie
Oh, and I decided to make a variation of banoffee pie, but this time I made coconut whipped cream instead of regular whipped cream. That sh*t was GOOD. I brought 2 little pies to the T house and Vin’s brother and his wife loved it. They ate one and took the other home. Vin’s OK w/that just b/c he knows I have the rest of the homemade coconut cream and toffee @ home in the fridge and can make him his own deconstructed coconut banoffee pie parfait later. haha
AND, last but not least, a few weeks ago, a friend of mine asked if I could help out with baked goods for a play she was involved in, and I was more than happy to oblige. The play is “The Laramie Project” and proceeds from the sale of the cupcakes are going to support a great cause. I made a whole bunch of mini cupcakes with colorful frosting and delivered them to the director herself on Friday. My friend told me the cupcakes were awesome. I’m just glad I could help out and benefit The Matthew Shepard Foundation and Interweave. The last performances of the production are next weekend (November 12-13) so check it out if you have the chance.
A rainbow assortment of cupcakes
Next weekend and week after will be cake ball mania @ my house. And then it’s Thanksgiving and it’ll be cream puff mania. And then it’s Christmas. And sometime in-between now and New Year’s I hope to get some sleep. Even better if I was sleeping AND catching some rays on a nice, warm beach, but thanks to Paul Sarbanes and Michael Oxley, the odds of that happening before year end are mathematically impossible. And now, it’s the end of Sunday funday…
Beach cupcakes and cutting cake... complete with shells, sand, and sea!
After this weekend’s baking project, I wish I were on a nice beach instead of creating mini edible vacation scenes. A friend of a friend is getting married and the theme of her bridal shower: her honeymoon in the Caribbean. As soon as I heard that, I had the perfect idea in mind. I suggested doing a beach theme: half sand and half ocean with a couple seashells scattered on the cupcake.
Fondant starfish
This was one of my more organized baking endeavors. The execution went just as planned (save for one minor design kink, but that’s what test cupcakes are for) and I finished an hour ahead of schedule. The baking went smoothly, the frosting wasn’t a complicated fiasco, and cutting and shaping the fondant was a breeze. Why? B/c I used my homemade fondant for this. I really don’t know why I keep thinking that MAYBE using ready made store bought fondant would be better; it’s like I keep going back to it thinking it’ll be easier and faster than making my own, thinking that hey, maybe this overpriced factory processed fondant will work this time, maybe it’s changed for the better and won’t try to piss me off so quickly or be so difficult… but no. Purchased fondant is just like that bad relationship you can’t get rid of until you meet this NEW wonderful home made fondant and learn to open up to it. How’s THAT for an analogy, eh? Life lessons AND pretty baked goods all in one website. hahaha
Spending the day at the seashore... rather, spending a day recreating a whole bunch of tasty seashores.
Back to the cupcakes. I rolled out homemade yellow fondant and punched out stars and then hand shaped them into little starfish. I felt like the tiny starfish wasn’t enough, so I cut out forms to hand shape into those skinny, long, swirly-looking shells (kind of like conch shells… but not…). I took a couple of the “reject cupcakes” (smaller or misshapen cupcakes) and used them as test subjects. I frosted half of the cupcake and then patted brown sugar on it to resemble the “sand”. (BTW, graham cracker crumbs will also work, but the texture of brown sugar is much closer to sand.) Then I piped wavy rows of blue frosting for the water, and then pressed one of each shell onto the cupcake. It looked pretty much as I imagined in my head =)
The beautiful arrangement at the bridal shower... it looks fantastic! (Photo credit: one of the bride's friends took this shot.)
I was also requested to make a small cake for the event in the same design as the cupcakes, so I cut out larger stars to shape into bigger starfish. I pressed the brown sugar on the cake first, then piped the ocean waves. And I used extra icing to “glue” the fondant shells onto the top and side of the cake. Pretty cute, right? I was happy about how these came out. The bride texted and said they were amazing and perfect and my friend (one of the maids of honor) said they looked awesome and tasted delicious. I think I can say from the sound of things, this was a job well done. haha
Putting extra frosting, cupcakes and fondant stars to good use
I punched out extra stars and made some extra cupcakes to donate for this West Islip Family day event. They’re going to give my cupcakes out as one of the prizes and my cards will be passed out. I’m not really looking for more business or press around here since I’d like to be out of this house soon, but I have a ton of cards so I might as well distribute them. Couldn’t hurt, right? And I don’t feel too shabby about helping a good cause, either.
Taking a hiatus from baking for a couple weeks. This has been too exhausting with work. I need to recharge…
Things have been quite hectic these past few weeks so I’m just posting a quick blurb. I’ve actually been doing a lot of baking, but a massive workload has been dumped upon my desk so I haven’t been able to take pics or write anything witty or creative about the goods. Here’s a rundown of the past 3 weeks:
bright red batter --> dark red fluffy baked goodness
1) My lovely friend C asked for angel food cupcakes again for her 29th birthday (she looks 24, people ;o) and of course, I couldn’t refuse. She requested almost double the amount from last year, and this time requested half with vanilla frosting and half with chocolate frosting. Done deal, woman! C was kind enough to meet up with me @ my office for the pick up, and I felt like a d*ck for not being able to celebrate with her b/c of my workload. =( But I think this time around the angel food cakes came out better than last year’s batch. I can tell b/c Vin ate all my extras… even the test “rejects”. He said they were like eating fluffy marshmellows. haha I was in such a rush that day that I didn’t even remember to snap a cell phone shot of the goodies. *sigh* So stupid of me.
2) Our friends J and D just got engaged a few months ago and I baked red velvet cupcakes for their engagement party. I made cream cheese frosting for this event and tried to make half of it appear to be fall colors, but homemade cream cheese frosting is fickle; I wanted a nice bold, orange color and ended up getting a peachy orange. Meh. The lovebirds and their guests liked them and said they were great so I could care about the color. It was a last minute request so as long as they tasted fine and looked half decent… it’s all good.
engagement cupcakes for J & D
3) My little brother and sister’s birthdays were the end of September, but since my bro was coming to town this past weekend for Geekfest 2011, we had decided to wait to celebrate their birthdays later. (And by “little” I’m making a reference to the age order. I’m the oldest but I’m also the runt of the group and I have a mild Napoleon complex so I pull rank and still call them “little” =) I don’t quite remember the exact details that led up to this situation, but a few months back, I asked my sister what kind of cake she wanted for her birthday and somehow we were talking about being old and if she was cake decorating, then her cake would look like a My Little Pony taking a poo. Really. Don’t ask. We discuss really random things and I think the two of us take the cake (pun!) when I say we can really talk about anything. haha So… since I didn’t have the time to sculpt a My Little Pony out of fondant or molding chocolate, I just bought this little cake topper thing from Amazon. I had left over cake batter from the previous week’s red velvet engagement cupcakes, so I made a little 4″ filled cake with cream cheese frosting. The top of the cake box caved in and smushed the top of the cake so I did a quick fix and covered the edge with shaved chocolate. It didn’t look half bad for a speedy on-the-spot repair. In went the plastic figurine, and I brought a little sandwich bag of chocolate frosting for the poo and made a little blob by the tail. It looked weird as hell and you wouldn’t get it had I not mentioned the odd backstory, but eh, it was funny and everyone liked it. haha
Left: chocolate frosting in a Ziploc bag... looking like a sandwich bag (which, by the way, is a perfect MacGyver substitute for a piping bag) of poo; Right: a plastic My Little Pony taking a dump on a mini red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting and messily strewn chocolate shavings
My little bro (he’s almost 6 feet tall and if he didn’t have such a baby face, he’d make a good linebacker) has a thing for pies. I don’t know why he’s obsessed with pies, but since I’m a caring and thoughtful big sis, I made little banoffee pies for him instead of cake. Last month, a girl friend and I checked out this place in the Village that was apparently known for this British dessert made of banana + toffee. I got a slice to go and it was really tasty! And I realized it was super easy to make for those times you’re in a time crunch (I was working on my sister’s cake the same time I was prepping the pie)! I was in a bind so I bought ready made graham cracker crusts, but I still made the toffee, sliced the bananas, whipped the cream and hand shaved the chocolate. You pretty much dump those ingredients into the pie crust, refrigerate, and eat. As long as my brother and sister liked their speedy birthday baked goods, I was happy. It was a nice way to end our family dinner =)
Mini banoffee pies... I should've taken a pic of a half-eaten one to show the layers =/
4) We had our open house the day after my sibs’ birthday dinner. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to sweeten the pot (another pun! I’m on a freaking roll!) for potential buyers checking out the house, so I made about 4 dozen mini red velvet cupcakes when I made my sister’s mini cake. I used the last of my cream cheese frosting batch and made quick ghetto swirls on all those minis. A few of them looked sloppy, but eh, I was being speedy since I needed to set them out quickly (what else is new these days?) and plopped them onto my glass cake stands. Vin made a nice little sign and laid out my baking cards and napkins, and we rushed out the door so the realtor could work her magic. She told us later that the cupcakes were a hit and that quite a few people were really interested in the house… but we haven’t heard anything since =( We’re just waiting for those offers to come rolling in. Any day now. C’mon, people… my house is realllly nice…
I’m pretty much spent. I have a bridal shower order for this weekend and wedding favors for the same beautiful bride-to be, then making mini cupcakes in support of a rising actress friend’s play, but other than that I can’t really take anything else on with the borderline suicidal workload and all the extra effort needed in keeping the house neat and clean. Such a Catch-22 getting all this business now and I have to turn people down b/c of my real job. Meh. I was thinking of making something pumpkin-y for Halloween, but who knows. Aside from these projects, I’ll probably just be baking for Thanksgiving and Christmas family holiday dinners… and catching up on sleep. And I’m kiiiiinda sick of red velvet now. =P
The rose cupcakes actually weren’t what I originally had in mind. I’m somewhat annoyed so just look @ the pictures while I quietly sulk about it. All I’m gonna say is if the day ever comes that I can no longer make buttercream roses in my sleep, that’ll be the end of the world.
"Earth day" birthday cupcakes
Note to self: requests for blue + green swirl frosting = cupcakes that look like “Earth”.
I made some extra chocolate minis and brought in leftover eggnog frosting to bring to co-workers. I didn’t have time to decorate before bringing them in to the office, so I rushed to squeeze every last drop of frosting on the cupcakes and put one Christmas tree sprinkle on each during my lunch break. There were a lot of gift baskets and store-bought baked goods out in the office, but I’m glad everyone still had room for my cupcakes. =)
