Easter Cupcakes

It's Easter time, which means spring themed confections!  I've made some cupcakes for my women's Bible study.  The first is a chocolate cupcake with the same peanut butter mousse filling from the winging cake.  I think it may be my favorite of the three.  Little bee hives with jelly bean bees with almond sliver wings

Next, we have vanilla cupcakes with chocolate buttercream filling.  I toasted some coconut to make some nest material, and used chocolate eggs to make a fun spring nest. 

Last, we have vanilla cupcakes with a raspberry cream filling.  These I just went for more simple and iced the tops with buttercream and used melted vanilla wafers to make a design and placed them on the tops.

Winging cake

My husband just earned his Naval Aviator wings, and so in celebration I made a cake for him!  It's a chocolate cake with peanut butter mousse and peanut butter cups chopped up for the filling.  I iced with buttercream and then sculpted the wings from fondant.  The side is decorated with hand placed gold dragees (sugar pearls) It was a lot of fun to make and my husband appriciated it.

I see London I see France

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.  

Be on the lookout!

No, there is no one after you.  I don't think...I can't honestly be too sure.  However, do be on the lookout for my baking blog 'confections of a bakeaholic' back up and running!  I had been avoiding it because I couldn't come up with a good way to design it, and I didn't want an ugly blog!  Well folks, it won't be ugly for much longer!  I'm getting a Mandy designed blog!  She designs really cute and fun blogs and usually a percentage of her proceeds benefits a different charity each month.  This month is her birthday month though, and so she's running a deal that all (that's right 100%) of the proceeds benefit the MS Society bike ride that she participates in every year!  You can get anywhere from a blog button to a full on blog makeover, and you'll be donating money to a very worthy cause!  If you're a master blog designer yourself and don't really want a supercool blog, you can just donate any amount of money here, but why wouldn't you want something designed by her.  We need to keep Mandy busy, because she just has too much time on her hands.  Between running Survival Mode Parent, participating in Awana nights at her church, working full time, being a wife and supporting her husband as his TaeKwonDo tournaments, she just doesn't have much to do!  I am of course being sarcastic, she sets an amazing example that I surely admire, so I coulnd't imagine donating to anyone else!  So, go check out her blog and I'll of course announce when my baking blog is pretty!  It's gonna be good!

Wedding favors?

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.)

Happy Valentines Day!

More recipes

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.