Springtime Bird Nest Cupcakes

My friend next door planned an egg hunt Saturday for the neighborhood kids. I offered to bring cupcakes for everyone. My initial plan was to create cupakes with bunny bums on them. I had flattened over 50 mini marshmallows with the idea to color them into bunny feet.

But I wasn't impressed with the way the cupcake turned out. Perhaps it was my husband's words I kept hearing when he saw this...

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The Buttercream Kitten

Know what that is? Not shredded cheese or shag carpet. That's a picture of my peanut butter buttercream frosting from my most recent cake, a kitten. I just want to lick my screen. I've loved frosting since I was a wee tot. My mom always made homemade birthday cakes with delicious homemade icing for as long as I can remember. I grew up thinking everyone's mom made their own birthday cakes and all frosting was delicious buttercream. The first time I tasted store bought birthday cake with its whipped, sweet frosting the notion I would make my own cakes was sealed. I've never taken a class to do cakes. Instead the first time I wanted to try my hand at cake baking and decorating I just called my mom. She came over to my house and walked me through her recipe for frosting, baking a cake and then how to pipe on frosting...all for a Darth Vader cake for my coworkers on the eve of the first Star Wars prequel being released. My first cake was so much better than Jar Jar Binks.

My mom gave me her old few Wilton cake pans and I've added to them through the years; I now have over 50 shaped pans. This is just a portion of my stash hanging in the basement.

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Chocolate-Peanut Butter Filled Chocolate Hearts

I love frosting. I can't throw out leftover icing from a delicious cake I made. Currently there was a container of scrumptious chocolate-peanut butter butter cream from my man's birthday cake in the refrigerator begging for new life.

It was reborn inside Valentine chocolates!

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Mini Nutter Butter Cupcakes

Yesterday was my man's birthday. I had leftover cake batter after putting his birthday cake in the oven. Not enough to make cupcakes but just enough to make a few mini cupcakes.

I also had a bag of mini Nutter Butters in the pantry.

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Duo of Cupcakes: Part Three, Peanut Butter Cupcake with Pumpkin Cream Cheese Frosting

I've got everything zooming along perfectly with the Peanut Butter Blossom Cupcakes for my friend. And I'm sure that one flavor cupcake would be enough to make her smile. But I just keep thinking I should do two different kinds. I ponder what else she likes other than peanut butter and I land on pumpkin. Hmmmm. I'm not a pumpkin fan in sweets but I think peanut butter and pumpkin could work together; I put them in a tasty soup why not a cupcake.

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Duo of Cupcakes: Part Two, PB Blossom Cupcakes

The cookies were done now it was time to try and pull off baking them inside a cupcake for my friend. I follow Bake It in a Cake on facebook and I'm constantly fascinated by the creations. Before I ever discovered BIIAC I had already thought baking sweet surprises inside cupcakes sounded awesome. And I tried to create my own Buckeye Cupcake for my dad's birthday. I need to return to that creation and perfect it. I also have a dream in my head to create a cupcake with a truffle inside that is inspired off Baileys Coffee.

I digress. The task at hand is to bake my Peanut Butter Blossoms inside a vanilla cupcake. I used the cake and frosting recipe here. I didn't change a thing and I was very pleased with the result. Very.

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Chocolate Butter Cookies with Umph!

The other week I made the super simple, super scrumptious butter cookies. I pondered in that post the results with chocolate cake mix. This weekend I found a box of Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge cake mix in the top of the pantry and I just happened to have a pack of cream cheese in the fridge earmarked for a Martha Stewart Baking adventure. I could buy more cream cheese; I needed to find out if the cookies worked with chocolate.

I set the butter and cream cheese out to soften while I put the Christmas tree together. I then mixed the softened cheese and butter with a glob of creamy peanut butter, a pour of vanilla, one egg and the discovered box of chocolate cake mix. The mixed batter goodness that Thing Two and I had a sample of was then tucked into the fridge the requisite two hours while I figured out the Christmas tree lights.

With the lights aglow and Yoda watching over us I was now ready to scoop and bake. Twenty minutes later I was popping a warm chocolate cookie in my mouth and rolling my eyes back in pleasure. It was good. Very good. 

You couldn't really taste the peanut butter. I think I need to up that factor next time to really get a punch. Perhaps less cream cheese more peanut butter. I'll have to play around with it. Since the peanut butter wasn't overwhelming I thought the cookie could still use some umph to put it over the top.

I remembered my neighbor telling me the original butter cookies would be excellent with a touch of my buttercream frosting on top. I asked my man if he thought eggnog buttercream or Bailey's buttercream sounded better. He chose...

Bailey's! I'd never made such a buttercream so I just set to creaming the butter and Crisco, adding the powdered sugar then pouring in Bailey's a bit at a time until the taste seemed just right. I also added vanilla extract, almond extract and two drops of chocolate flavored oil.

I just did a small pipe of the Bailey's buttercream on half the cookies.

It took an already great cookie up a notch. And they tasted even better the next day.

I have a lot of the Bailey's buttercream left in the refrigerator. I think I see some cupcakes in my future.

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A Death Star Birthday

 We celebrated my middle moppet turning seven this weekend with the feast and cake of his own choosing. I spent the weekend making it happen creating my first ever stacked cake with a Death Star on top along with a buffet of baby back ribs, collard greens, corn, fried okra, mac and cheese, and lima beans. With a BBQ sauce mustache above his gorgeous grin he hugged me and told me it was a beautiful day. Happy Birthday, little man!

Making the Death Star come to life.

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I Like Candy, Part One: A Hunger Born

I was going to post about my chocolate creation this past weekend but thought I should do a first post to explain how this whole candy thing started. I've been baking and decorating shaped cakes for years for family and friends. Never for money or request. That makes me nervous as a long tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs since I'm self-taught, my only lessons being watching my mom decorate cakes when I was growing up in the eighties. Fast forward to this past February when my super fab next door neighbor asked if I'd bake a cake for her son's fourth birthday party. She said she'd pay. Oh my. I told her I'd do it for just the cost of ingredients and still felt trepidation. The theme was Lego; the design left to me. 

Originally I thought I'd do a giant Lego brick cake. Have you seen them? Basically a sheet cake with cupcakes on top all iced a solid color. Effective but I thought maybe I could do better. I did have a silicone cake mold of a Lego Man I had purchased at Lego Land. Maybe I could use that. I did a test bake in the mold and realized it would not work with cake. Cute as a brownie. But with added buttercream icing, because I do not, will not do fondant, the details would be lost. 

Then an idea occurred to me. CANDY! I'd always seen the bag of Wilton Candy Melts on the cake aisle at Michael's. Maybe I could make a candy man from the mold. And I did. And it was easy. And it was awesome! Then I made candy Lego bricks from a Lego ice cube mold. 

The cake was a big hit. And a candy love was born.

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