Baseball

My nephew turned 9 a few weeks ago and as an avid cupcake supporter, my sister asked me to make the cupcakes. And the cake pops. And the cake. WOW! Talk about a lot! But I was excited and ready to get baking. My nephew had decided on a baseball themed party, so off to the ball game we went!

 Can I tell you how fun Wilton's 3-D sports ball pan is? Not that the actual pan is exciting, but the outcome is! Look at that perfectly round baseball! Incredible. 

 Not a large amount of pictures here, but there were a lot of kids at this party. It was super fun, though.

 Happy 9th birthday, Ethan! We love you!

Phew it is amazing how quickly time is flying by! It feels like sand slipping through my fingers. We have a newborn and our oldest started Kindergarten...lots of exciting and new changes!
 So let's rewind a bit. My older brother's birthday was a few weeks ago and he is obsessed, obsessed with Twinkies. I saw a Twinkies cupcake recipe on Pinterest and thought I would give it a try. Um, yum! Although they definitely did not taste like a Twinkies, the marshmallow filling and frosting were so delicious! Definitely a good addition to our party.

Birthdays

So a quick update, as I have company due to arrive any moment (hey, you have to take advantage of what time you have!)...baby #3 has arrived! She was born July 31 in our bathroom with 911 on the phone. I'm not even exaggerating. We like a little drama around here! You would think with baby #3, I would know the signs, right? Well, in my defense I was induced with #1 and #2 was 5 weeks early and I didn't know I was in labor (pre-term labor is way different than regular labor). PLUS I was having contractions for weeks that would get close together and then phase back out. Long story short, it was less than 20 minutes from me waking my husband up to baby being here. She. Came. Fast. So fast that we got 911 on the phone about 20 seconds before she was born. But we are both healthy and thank goodness there were no complications! So Happy Birthday, little baby!

 On another birthday note, August is FULL of birthdays for our family. My older brother's birthday is this coming week and I'm pretty excited because I have a surprise up my sleeve for him. It may or may not involved some special cupcakes ;) I just hope it turns out in real life as good as it is in my head!

Cinnamon roll

Pinterest is one of my favorite websites. I can't get over all the awesome ideas on there! And most of the time, it's so something so simple but brilliant that it leaves you wondering why you never thought of that before. I recently saw a recipe on the website for cinnamon roll pancakes. Um, yumm! So of course we had to make them, and of course they were super delicious. Later that night, I was watching TV with the hubs thinking about those pancakes and how good they would taste in cupcake form. Just imagine all that cinnamon filling and cream cheese glaze/frosting wrapped up into a delicious cupcakes. Mmmmm I'm definitely going to have to try to figure out some cinnamon roll inspired cupcakes!

Lemon Blueberry

 I did it! I finally broke down and made some cupcakes, just because I wanted to. It helped tremendously that my uncle fixed our air conditioner, so I wasn't as concerned about heating up my house and then roasting for the rest of the day. I was reading a little on the Cupcakes Take the Cake blog (www.cupcakestakethecake.blogspot.com) and stumbled across a recipe for lemon blueberry cupcakes. I was sold.
 I do have to say that I took a few shortcuts. The butter wasn't quite room temp (the microwave may have helped with that) and I used frozen blueberries from last summer, but since these were just for us I didn't feel too bad. These cupcakes were divine,even with the shortcuts. My husband isn't a huge sweets person, but he would eat 4 of them at a time. So yummy! I will say my biggest concern was when I was scooping the batter into the baking cups and hoping I would end up with blueberries in each cupcake (which I did ), but that's a risk you've got to take when working with fruit I suppose.
 The frosting was good as well, but I'm not sure it worked so great with these cupcakes. It was a lemon cream cheese. Both my husband and I liked it, but not so much on the cupcake. Again, it doesn't help that I was pressed for time and the ingredients were already room temperature and I didn't want to waste those ingredients. I would have played with the frosting a little more, but just flat out ran out of time. So with that being said, the frosting might have been perfect for it. I think we will have to have another trial run with these to see for sure :)

Summa time

I love summer. Sunshine, warmth, water, vacations...what isn't to love? There's also so many fruits in season, going to the grocery store and checking out the produce section is amazing. I really want to try some lemon blueberry cupcakes. I keep seeing different recipes and hearing about them through different websites and they just sound so yummm. Alas, my energy isn't exactly cooperating at this point. Can't I have lemon blueberry cupcakes without having to actually make them?? :) 35 weeks pregnant is leaving me a bit tired the past few days. Ahh well, I think I'm going to have to ignore it and do some baking! I'm sure the wonderful smells and treats afterwards will help wake me up!

Life...

 It has been an absolutely ridiculous long time. Unacceptable. No excuses. Shame. On. Me. Life, once again, tended to get in the way. I'm still pregnant with numero tres, 34 weeks! It's finally starting to feel real. That and taking care of my boys has been enough to keep me busy, but we also sold our house, bought another and moved! Ahhhh, can't believe it actually happened! But we are thrilled and we are finally, finally, finally feeling settled.
 There hasn't been a whole lot happening in cupcake land. In fact, when I made the cupcakes for my son's 5th (FIVE?! Is he really 5?!?) it felt strange and foreign. Not exactly how I want to feel about making cupcakes...
 I even had to turn down a few cupcake orders *gasp* I can't help it! But when everything you own is in a box and then your closings are delayed for almost a month, it makes everything difficult! But life is finally calming down (until this baby is born at least) and all my cupcake stuff has a nice spot in our new house and I am thrilled to start making cupcakes more regularly again. Hopefully it won't be another 6 months before my next post :)

Christmas!

Christmas! Ten days away! *insert panic here* Seriously, though, this is my favorite time of year and I say this every year, but this might be my favorite Christmas yet :) My boys are yet another year older and I love how Christmas takes on a completely new meaning when you have children. It's just fabulous. I've especially enjoyed making presents with my 4-year-old to give as gifts to his grandparents, teacher, etc. this year. Fun stuff!

So it must have been about 2 weeks ago now that I was up for 3 dozen more cupcakes with a Christmas theme. Being as these were for my sister to market with, I had a little bit more freedom in choosing flavors, etc. I went with red velvet (I'm loving the cream cheese frosting right now) and cookies & cream (they got rave reviews last time I made them). It was also the same day as my brother's birthday and so I made attempt 2 at carrot cake cupcakes (which, by the way, turned out ah-mazing).

Now these next ones were the fail of the night. They were supposed to look like this (well, the concept at least):

But ended up looking like this:

I did not have stawberries. I did not have time to go to the store. So I tried an all-frosting version. Definitely didn't go quite as planned. Thankfully though, it's Christmas-time, they are red and white...it worked. I apologize for the horrible photos!

Carrot cake take 2

I've been thinking about that carrot cake cupcake that flopped on me....it might be time to give it another try. Especially since the brother's birthday is right around the corner. Hmmmmm

Caramel fail

I was inspired by a comment left on this blog to try a caramel apple recipe. I thought that an apple cupcake with a salted caramel frosting sounded superb, so I had some free time and off to baking I went! The apple cupcake was a little different (I mean, come on, there are actual apples inside the cake!), but it was smelling fantastic coming from my oven so I gave it the benefit of the doubt.

While the cupcakes were baking, I started the frosting. With it being a salted caramel frosting, you kind of need caramel and I've never made caramel before. Ever. But I thought "How hard can this be?!" Let's just say, it was an...experience. It was pretty fun to make though because it felt like a science experiment!

So here we go...Round 1! I melted down the sugar and it never actually boiled, so it got pretty dark before a mental red flag went off. I took it off the heat and added the butter and half & half within 2 minutes of taking it off the heat. It bubbled and steamed just like it was supposed to and as soon as I added the sea salt and attempted to mix it, all hope was lost. The sugar had hardened and was like a rock in the middle of the pan.

Ok, so maybe I burned the sugar...Round 2! I hovered over that pot, mixing and mixing and when it was a pretty amber color (significantly lighter than the first time), I took it off the heat and this time immediately added the butter and half & half. Bubbles, steam, hardened sugar.

Now if you've ever made caramel before, you know it is not the quickest process. With my 2 kids running around, I was quickly running out of time! So Plan B. I went and bought some caramel squares and melted them down with half & half. I added some sea salt, butter and powdered sugar and wah-lah! We had some "salted caramel frosting".

First words out of my mouth after tasting (atop a divine apple cupcake) "WOW! That is sweet!". We ended up throwing the entire bowl of frosting away, it was so incredibly sweet and didn't work at all.
So I'm thinking maybe a cinnamon cream cheese would be an awesome compliment to the apple cupcake. But my question is, what's the deal with the homemade caramel? Where did I go amiss?