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?

More cupcakes

I wanted to update with a few more pictures. I've been busy, busy the past few weeks with orders and I'm loving it! I haven't tried any new flavors lately aside from the pumpkin, which is quickly becoming a personal favorite.

Graveyard cupcake:



I was asked to make some cupcakes with a breast cancer awareness theme. I found these liners at a local cake shop and just thought they were adorable! My favorite part is that a portion of the cost of the liners is donated to breast cancer awareness research.

This just might be the most delicious apple ever :)

Fun

 Yesterday I had some free time, so I decided to try a pumpkin cupcake recipe. Sure enough, the smells in my kitchen were pure amazing-ness. The batter had that beautiful pumpkin pie color

And the smell! I wish I could bottle it up and upload it onto this blog because it was so enticing! They turned out beautifully and tasted as good as they smelled. I used a cream cheese frosting and it was a perfect compliment to the pumpkin.

So of course, I had to decorate them and with the current season we are in, what better way to decorate than Fall/Halloween?

This candy corn one is I think my favorite:

 Even though the mummy is pretty darn cute, too.

 Pumpkin:

 The ghost didn't turn out so well, but the concept is there. I just need to work on my execution!

So I had fun making them and my family and friends most definitely enjoyed eating them!

Girly

I know I say this every time I make cupcakes, but I was SO excited about the cupcakes I was asked to make last weekend. I think the theme had a lot to do with it...hot pink and zebra. Can you get any more girly and fabulous than that?! I made 1 dozen chocolate in hot pink liners and 1 dozen vanilla in zebra striped liners.

I love these liners! They are just so stinkin' cute! Anyways, I wasn't able to do everything I wanted with them because I had a shoulder injury, but they were still pretty fantastic. I need to get the pictures and post them, but the zebra lined cupcakes had hot pink frosting with a white chocolate "J" (for the girls first name) and the hot pink lined cupcakes had white frosting with white and black glitter....*sigh* Boy did I love making these cupcakes! 

Fall

September is quickly coming to a close and it's hard to walk through a store anymore without noticing all the Halloween decorations and candy. Fall is one of my favorite times of year and I can't help but be a little awestruck at how beautiful the earth gets with all the leaves changing colors. Not only that, but we can start wearing sweatshirts again and who doesn't love that?! That being said, this rainy weather has definitely been putting me in the mood to bake and I've got some cute ideas for some Fall/Halloween cupcakes. I'm also thinking of trying my hand at some different recipes...can you smell the pumpkin now? Mmmmmmmm

Cake pops

I've gotten some new business lately and let me tell ya, it is exciting! My brother works as one of the lead techs at a local car lot and he had me make 6 dozen cupcakes a few weeks ago in honor of one of the employees birthdays. Six dozen cupcakes; red velvet, funfetti and chocolate peanut butter. Quite an order!

On a side note, can I just say how in love I am with the chocolate peanut butter cupcakes?! Mmmm they are just so delicious! In fact, the more I'm thinking about them, the better they sound ;)

Another area that's really taking off lately is cake pops. Just this week, I had a friend order 2 dozen of them and I delivered them to her OB/GYN's office...she just had a baby a few weeks ago. What a fabulous idea this is! I never sent anything, not even a note (horrible, I know) thanking my doctor's office after the birth of either of my son's. With my youngest being a preemie, I really should have taken the time! But that's the thing, when you have a newborn, who has time to make some cupcakes or cake pops or anything special for that matter? So I was especially pleased when she asked me to make them and I even delivered them for her. Great idea! Wish I had thought of it! Feel free to pass it along :)

Peanut butter

I wanted to make some cupcakes last week, but wanted to make something different...without having to go to the store :) So that led me to chocolate peanut butter cupcakes. Basically it's a chocolate cupcake with peanut butter frosting and I actually ended up making a peanut butter filling and putting that in half of them. The verdict? They were delicious, the frosting had a perfect amount of peanut butter. I will say though that the ones that had the peanut butter filling were gone much quicker than the ones that didn't. Note taken :)

Candyland!

For my youngest niece's 1st birthday party, my sister decided to have a Candyland themed birthday party. Pretty awesome party theme! And the options for cupcakes were pretty much limitless.

Here are the gingerbread men and gumdrop cupcakes. In front of those are cake pops. This was my first run with cake pops and I LOVED making them! Not to mention, they were a complete hit.

Just a little bit of Candy land love. 

Life

I sincerely apologize for the lack of activity lately! I have been making cupcakes and have even ventured into the realm of cake pops, but life has just gotten in the way! I have gotten out of the habit of posting pictures and cupcake adventures and that is something I plan on rectifying as soon as possible. I also have made a page on Facebook, but have not set it up so it's functional yet. In fact, I'm not even sure it has any relevant information at all. I will be adding that to my to-do list! Until next time....

Carrot cake or pumpkin??

Well, I made my brother carrot cake cupcakes. I wasn't really a fan. My niece & brother liked them a lot, but I don't know. I think they tasted more like pumpkin than carrot cake. I will say that I learned a very, very important lesson. Nuts, whether they are walnuts or pecans, are essential when making a carrot cake. I decided to skip adding the nuts. Big, BIG mistake. I think that had a lot to do with them tasting more like pumpkin than carrot cake.
Slight change of thought here, but can we just talk for a minute about how long it takes to peel and grate a full pound of carrots? Don't get me wrong, they were beautiful and smelled sooooo good! But it took quite awhile AND I practically took my thumb off in the process. Ok, I may only have 2 grate marks on my finger, but boy oh boy did it hurt!

See? Beautiful!

Carrot cake

My brother is obsessed with carrot cake. Completely and totally obsessed. I'm not quite sure where this obsession came from. I mean, he's only 18 months younger than I am so we pretty much did everything together and never have I known him to be so completely into carrot cake. He's always bugging me to make him cupcakes. "Meredith, when are you making cupcakes?" "Hey Meredith, I think you should make me some cupcakes" "I want some cupcakes!"... get the idea?? It can be quite annoying, but hey, at least the boy supports me :) So I'm thinking in honor of my baby brother, I'm going to have to work on a carrot cake recipe. It definitely has me intrigued!

Baby shower

One of my cousin's is having a baby in August and for her shower I was asked to make cupcakes. The momma-to-be requested red velvet and lemon with coconut sprinkled on top. These cupcakes were quite an experience. Nothing seemed to work right! Plus I had my son's birthday party AND I ran a 5k at the Sunburst so I was on overload! But nevertheless, they were made and pretty fantastic.

The pictures are not my best, I was pretty tired...To give you an idea of how "well" these cupcakes cooperated, by the time we made it to Grand Rapids, MI every single one of my white chocolate "Baby"s (which I had to make twice) had melted. At that point I could do nothing but laugh! Ahhh well, we live and learn :)

Bridal shower update

The pink and white bridal shower cupcakes were one of my orders for May. Here's a few more pictures of those.

Cookout

 May was quite a busy month. We not only have my son's, husband's and mine birthday's, but I also had 3 new cupcake orders. Woo-hoooo! Very exciting.
 So one of the orders was for an end-of-school-year cookout. I wanted to make them fun because it was for elementary students. Chocolate and vanilla were requested, 2 dozen of each, and when I asked if they wanted anything special I was told "Oh just some sprinkles would be fine". What? WHAT?!? I don't even know what those words mean! Let's just say, I gave them more than just sprinkles :)

I used regular cupcake liners with these ones because I had found some fabulous liners at a local decorating shop (La Candy Shoppe) and they looked like red and white checked tablecloths. Can you get any more cook-out than that?

Bridal shower

This past weekend I had the honor of making some cupcakes for a bridal shower. I made 15 vanilla and 15 red velvet. The only request from the bride's sister (who order the cupcakes) was that they be girly, fun & pink...LOVE it! What could possibly be more fun than hot pink?! Here are two pictures from the event:

I love the way she incorporated the flowers with the cupcakes. Pretty fabulous, right?

Jelly Belly Contest

Jelly Belly is having a contest. It's a pretty fabulous contest, if I do say so myself. All you have to do is decorate a cupcake using jelly belly's and enter a picture of it for a chance to win $10,000 or lots of other fabulous prizes! Sounds like a pretty good deal to me :) Check it out here http://www.jbcupcakechallenge.com/ .

Happy birthday!

This past weekend was my dear mother's birthday! Happy birthday, Mom!! She's a fabulous mom...just sayin'. Anywhooo she just happens to be a huge fan of my cupcakes. No bias there, right?? She requested vanilla cupcakes for her birthday and can I just tell you how fabulous it was to dedicate a Saturday morning to baking? Putting on my apron, taking the mixer down from the shelf, mixing all the ingredients and smelling those amazing smells as the cupcakes baked. *sigh* I was in cupcake heaven!

St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day is one of my favorite holidays. Don't be fooled by my polish last name - I married into that! There's Irish in my blood and I love it! My 1st son is even named Patrick...hey, what can I say?

This St. Patrick's Day my entire family was decked out in the necessary green, right down to the underwear we were wearing (ok, that may have only been me!). But *sigh* there was no cupcake making on or around that day. Again, the joys of tax season. As soon as I get an opportunity, though, there will be both St. Patrick's Day AND Easter themed cupcakes in my future.

Secondary

I think I've mentioned before that for right now, I'm simply making cupcakes on the side. Along with being a full-time mom, I'm also a part-time bookkeeper and office manager for a CPA here in Mishawaka. Right now, it's March. Now when most people hear that it's March, they think spring or maybe St. Patrick's Day or something along those lines. Me? I think "Ok. One month left. There's only one month left. We can make it!". See, March in accounting land means tax season. In fact, from January-April 15 life tends to be taxes, taxes, taxes! I work more hours and I'm a lot more tired which means I have more to keep up with at home. This, in turn, means that I want to make cupcakes less and less right now. So again I apologize for the lack of posts lately and for those of you that thoroughly enjoy  my cupcakes, I apologize for the lack of making them; but never fear, they will return soon!

Pictures

Here are some cupcakes from my niece's baptism.

Thank you, Gretchen for the pictures! They are beautiful!

Pictures

I am finally in front of a computer WITH internet access AND I have my camera with me to upload pictures. Amazing!

Here are pictures of my most recent cupcakes. First up we have the chocolate cupcakes with cherry filling...

 

Next we have Valentine's Day cupcakes. The first ones are red velvet with cream cheese frosting.

Next are the chocolate chip cupcakes. They were for a kindergarten class party, so the big pink hearts are actually plastic rings.

Then we have the funfetti cupcakes for the same kindergarten class party.

Lastly, I would like to take a moment to appreciate sprinkles. I'm not a big sprinkles person, I actually prefer to not have sprinkles on cupcakes, cakes, donuts, etc, but I found these sprinkles and fell in love. 

They are just about the cutest darn things I have ever seen! Little red, white and pink heart sprinkles. Fabulous! I need more reasons to discover fabulous sprinkles like these!

I know my little man sure did enjoy them :)

Cupcake Wars

I'm obsessed with cupcakes....obviously. So it's only fitting that once I discovered Cupcake Wars on Food Network I was totally and completely hooked. This show is absolutely fabulous! If you don't watch it, I highly recommend it! We are talking insane challenges (the time-frame they have alone is enough to make it daunting - 2 hours to make 1000 cupcakes!) and total divas who all think, of course, that they make the absolute best cupcakes in America. I LOVE it.

For those of you who don't watch, I'll give a quick break-down of the show. It starts with 4 contestants who compete in 3 rounds of cupcake madness. After each round, 1 person is eliminated.
Round 1. The taste round. This is the round that gets me. Personally, I don't know how these people do it. The creativity they have to have to get past the 1st round is incredible. The 4 contestants have to make a cupcake (1 for each judge, so 3 cupcakes total) using insane ingredients that change each episode depending on what the final challenge is. I've seen everything from okra to goat cheese to salmon roe. And they have to taste good. They have 45 minutes for this challenge.
Round 2. 50% taste, 50% presentation. This round I think is a little bit more of a cake walk *ahem* It's more about you personally as a cupcake maker and bringing your best recipes to the table. The remaining 3 contestants have to each make 3 cupcakes (9 total) with their best recipes and decorations based on the final challenge. They have 75 minutes for this challenge.
Round 3. Final challenge. The final challenge the remaining 2 contestants get to have 4 baking assistants and a carpenter to help them. They have to design a cupcake display and make 1000 cupcakes. In 2 hours.

There are definitely parts of the show that are incredibly cheesy and dramatic, but what's a good show without a little drama. Check out the show yourself sometime! It's on F

Special request

Last week, I received a special request for some cherry cupcakes. They wanted chocolate cupcakes with cherry pie filling and I was definitely intrigued, as this is something I've never done before. I decided to fill the cupcakes after they were cooked instead of baking the filling in. I mean, come on, if you want a chocolate cupcake with cherry pie filling, I'm going to give you a chocolate cupcake with cherry pie filling!

So I baked up some chocolate cupcakes and cored the center of them, giving us the most room for filling inside the cake. My ever-faithful-partner-in-crime (my husband) and I then pureed some cherry pie filling and we filled those cupcakes wih it and then filled them some more. This cherry-filled cupcakes definitely did not lack any cherry! A little frosting with a cherry on top of the cupcake and some cherry glaze drizzled over it and wa-la! Beautiful cupcakes with a cherry surprise in the middle. Pictures to follow soon!

Seeing red

This Valentine's Day, my niece was having a party and asked me to make red velvet cupcakes for the event. She talked about these cupcakes every time I saw her for a month solid. The funny part is, I never once told her I was definitely making them! Ahhh the faith of a 10-year-old!

So of course, I made her cupcakes. And of course, I made the red velvet cupcakes she so desperately wanted. I have never made red velvet anything before. Or cream cheese frosting for that matter. After the cupcakes were all done, my husband and I tasted them and we thought they were pretty darn good, but I was worried about what my sister and niece would think of them. Like I said, this is something I've never done before! I guess I need not have worried because during the party, I received a text from my sister that said "OMG fabulous"...I knew exactly what she was talking about! So I asked her if she really liked them and she said they were so fabulous she just hid one for herself!

My internet access is still very limited at this point, but once I am able, I will post pictures of all of the Valentine's Day cupcakes I made, including the red velvets.

Valentine's Day

This Valentine's Day has definitely been different from previous ones. This year, I had cupcakes to bake...and a lot of them! I had 20 funfetti and 20 chocolate chip cupcakes to make for a school party, 15 red velvet for my niece's Valentine's Day party and 12 variety cupcakes to be given as a gift. I baked my heart out! Which is very appropriate, considering the holiday :) I hope you all had a fantastic Valentine's Day with your loved ones!

Birthday fun

We celebrated my youngest son's 1st birthday this week. It was a fun party with a year of 1st's type theme. The colors were red, orange, green and blue and we had pictures and polka dots everywhere. To be quite honest, my house looked like a scrapbook and we loved it! So with red, orange, green and blue dots, what's more appropriate than funfetti cupcakes?

 

Don't worry, I made a smash cake for the birthday boy, too. 

Cheerleaders

Here are the cupcakes I made for the Elkhart Christian Academy cheerleaders. The school colors are purple and white and their mascot is an eagle. I couldn't find anything eagle on the short time-span I had, so I decided to go with girly. What's more girly than a cheerleader?