This weekend, my best friend from college is getting married! So, we’re throwing her a lingerie party for her bachelorette party, and I made cupcakes. Her wedding colors are marigold and pewter, so I made her future monogram out of melted vanilla candies (the bride doesn’t like chocolate….we’re trying to get her some help for that) and put those on the white chocolate cupcakes filled with raspberry mousse. I also made vanilla cupcakes with the same filling, and so you could tell the difference, I made lingerie garments to go on those.
If I haven’t already mentioned, my sister Katie is getting hitched in May! She’s my only and older sister and she said she’d beat me up if I didn’t make her wedding favors. No, I’m just kidding. Don’t hit me. Well, her wedding cake is themed around Legos so I thought I’d attempt to make some favors that reflected the cake. However, a wedding is also a formal affair, so I thought I’d offer her an option between a cookie that coordinated with her colors and dress, and one that matched the cake. I made the round cookies by using a brush embroidery effect inspired by Toba Garret’s design in her book Creative Cookies. (I think she’s leaning towards the round ones.)
The baby shower cake I previously posted about was made up of the mom-to-be’s favorite flavors. Lemon and Chocolate. Not together, although she was pregnant…so who knew what she actually meant. I didn’t think that there was any reason why she shouldn’t get to have both, so I made the citrus cake and the best ever chocolate cake. Both had a raspberry buttercream filling and a plain buttercream frosting. I will now bequeath unto you my favorite (so far) buttercream filling recipe.
Fluffy Buttercream (a-la cakecentral.com)
3/4 C. egg whites (pasteurized or about 5 lg eggs)
2 C. shortening
1/2 C. butter (softened a little and cut into pieces)
4-5 C. powdered sugar
2 Tbs desired flavoring
2 Tbs milk or heavy cream
Whip the whites slowly at first until they get foamy, add flavor, and increase speed to medium
Start adding 1C of powdered sugar slowly
Keep whipping until meringue is shiny and stiff
With mixer in medium start adding shortening and butter a bit at a time. (at the beginning the mixture will look weird and kind of lumpy, that's normal)
Change mixer to high and mix until your buttercream looks homogenous and fluffy (5-15 min.)
Start adding sugar by 1/2 C.
Add the 2 Tbs of milk, and keep whipping until the sugar is well incorporated (5 more min)
Now, to make this a raspberry filling, you can either add a couple tablespoons of raspberry preserves, or chopped up fresh berries. You can of course substitute any berry you’d like. I won’t get mad at you. I’m just gonna say that raspberry goes so well with everything…as does strawberry, but raspberry just feels more sophisticated. I don’t know why.
A friend of mine asked me to make a cake for her friend’s baby shower! I am so excited to get to do this! The expectant mom-to-be is a Navy pilots wife and is going to be welcoming a baby boy. That of course meant that I had to do a plane design. I just had to! (well that and I got complete design freedom!) So, this is what I came up with… A 6” round with cupcakes!
As promised, here are the recipes I like to use for my cookies. (I’ve never understood the hoarding of recipes to keep under wraps. I guess that may be because we don’t have secret family recipes…)
Sugar Cookies (this is the No Fail Sugar cookie recipe via Cakecentral.com)
6 C. flour
3 tsp baking powder
2 C. butter
2 C. sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla (or whatever you want)
1 tsp salt
cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla, mix well.
mix in dry ingredients a little at a time, mix until flour is incoperated and dough comes together
chill for 1-2 hours
Pre-heat oven to 350°
roll into desired thickness, cut and place on ungreased cookie sheet
bake for 10 min. or until edges are browning
Raspberry thumbprint cookies (bettycrocker.com)
1 pouch (1 lb 1.5 oz) Betty Crocker® sugar cookie mix
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 egg
3 tablespoons Gold Medal® all-purpose flour
1/3 cup seedless raspberry jam
1 cup white vanilla baking chips
Red or green sugar, if desired
Heat oven to 375°F. In large bowl, stir cookie mix, butter, egg and flour until dough forms.
2. Roll dough into 3/4-inch balls; place 2-inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Using thumb or handle of wooden spoon, make indentation in center of each cookie. Spoon about 1/4 teaspoon jam into each indentation.
3. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until edges are light golden brown. Cool 5 minutes; remove from cookie sheet to wire rack.
4. In small microwavable bowl, microwave baking chips on High 1 to 2 minutes or until chips are melted; stir until smooth. Spoon melted chips into small resealable plastic bag; cut small hole in corner of bag. Squeeze bag gently to drizzle melted chips over cookies. Sprinkle with colored sugar.
Chocolate Snowflake cookies
2 squares chocolate (it doesn't say which kind)
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1 cup sugar
2 beaten eggs
1 teas. vanilla
1 cup flour
1 teas. baking powder
1/4 teas. salt
1/2 to 1 cup nuts
Powdered Sugar
Melt in a pan: 2 squares chocolate,1/4 cup butter or margarine
In a bowl mix: 1 cup sugar and the chocolate mixture
Cool and add: 2 beaten egg, 1 teas. vanilla, 1 cup flour,1 teas. baking powder, 1/4 teas. salt, 1/2 to 1 cup nuts
Chill 3 hours.
Make into balls and roll in powdered sugar.
Bake at 350 degrees for 10 min.
Ok, I realize that Christmas actually means celebrating the birth of our savior, however for some reason we celebrate with cookies instead of cake. This year I decided to conquer the sugar cookie in my small apartment kitchen. I’ll share the recipe in my next post in which I’ll share my favorite cookie recipes. For the shapes, I decided to make snowflakes, snowmen, mittens, and trees. The snowmen faces definitely came out to be my favorite! Although, I like the other snowmen too. I’ve got a thing for snowmen. The mittens have crushed peppermint to get a kind of furry look, and I used colored dragees to make Christmas tree ornaments.
I am fairly confident when I say that everybody loves cupcakes. They're quick and simple and already portioned out, no cutting required! I haven't had a whole lot of experience making them yet, but I'm getting better. Although, come to think of it, you can't really mess up a cupcake. You can really just blob icing on the top and cover it with sprinkles and you've got a festive little confection! However, in order to achieve a fancier look, you 
don’t have to do too much! All you need is a couple of decorator tips (a large star tip and a petal tip) and voila! The top photo, is simply made with the large star (1M size) tip. Fill your icing bag halfway full of your desired frosting. In this case, I used a chocolate fudge buttercream. Starting near the edge of the cupcake, make a single swirl around the rim. Then, make a smaller circle in the center of it, creating concentric icing circles. Top it off with another swirl. Garnish with sprinkles and 
little candies. The ones pictured above are made from royal icing, but you can certainly buy fun candies to adorn your cupcake! The black and white ruffle cupcakes are made with alternating cream cheese frosting and chocolate fudge buttercream. You can most certainly use anything you’d like, but since these were for Halloween, I liked the black and white contrast. The ruffles were achieved using a number 104 petal tip. With the narrow end pointing out, basically draw an “n” shape over and over until you’ve gone around the circumference of the cupcake. Repeat, alternating colors on each row. I usually get 7 or 8 rows of ruffles until I’m satisfied.
