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?