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?

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 :)