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?