Cupcakes

The road to hell is paved with good intention...I recently got an order for cupcakes.  If anyone remembers…cupcakes have literally kicked my butt lately.  I haven’t had good luck with them at all!  In fact – I recently burned over 6 dozen while trying to get ready for a work meeting.  The order I received was simple.  Chocolate cupcakes with a girlie design.  Because they were for a work friend – I decided to cover my bases (just to be safe)  I picked up 12 chocolate cupcakes from the grocery store (in case I burned another 6 dozen) and then went home to make cupcakes with my youngest punk.  I let her do all the adding and mixing and we used some very girlie foil lined cupcake cups that I picked up on the way home.  I have to say – weather it was the plantes aligning – or the mad baking skills of a 9 year old…or maybe the divinity of the foil cups…they turned out awesome!!!  And so – I set off to decorate MY 12 fresh baked cupcakes and let kiddo decorate the 12 store bought cupcakes.  (Actually – in hind sight…we baked 24 so I think my punk got to decorate 24 while I decorated 12! Lol) 

Anyway – we were up until midnight and we both had a ball. J 

My fave by far is the 1 boy-ish cupcake reserved for Jonah.  (I found out after the fact that Johan does not like frosting! Lol)   

I also got to make some super cute marshmallow flowers!!  I took mini's and cut them diagonally (from corner to corner) to make each pettle.  Dipped it in coarse sugar (for sparkle) and put a pearl in the center with a glob of frosting.  They were much cuter in person cuz the pic doesn't show the sparklee bits. :)

So that's it for the cupcakes...oh - and I was reeeely glad that they turned out cuz the grocery store cupcakes were crazy dry!! :(  And because my element finally went in my stove (and hubby picked up a new one today) I'm hoping ot make more cupcakes very soon! :)

A cake with intent but no plan...

This morning I started a cake for mom....ok - a few weeks ago I started a cake for my Mother...but life got in the way and I have neglected by blog ever since...so here's the final product.  I had the chance to work on my basket weave and even got to try out some new frosting flowers that I had never been able to figure out before. :)  YAY FROSTING!

It's kindof a messy mess of frosted goodness...but it's for my Grams Church Minister.  The entire congregation is quite elderly and the most exciting cake that any of them have ever seen is when the local sobeys got a new frosting stencil. :)  It was a huge hit!.  :)  (and I had a ton of fun with it.)

not so super-store cake

I offered to put a logo on a cake for a friend - super simple.  All I had to do is pick up the half slab from the Super-store.  White cake - white frosting - white trim...they clearly misunderstood my order!!!.     

When I arrived at the bakery counter to pick up the cake…it didn’t even have any trim!  Without warning I blurted out “That’s the ugliest thing I have ever seen!!!”  The 12 year old who was working behind the counter looked afraid and offered to put a border on it.  For a brief second I was impressed that a 12 year old could put a shell border on an ugly arsed cake and left to wander while she completed the task.  10 minutes later, I came back to find her attacking it violently with frosting!!!  I told her to stop – give me a big discount and I’d take it home and fix it myself.  At the same time – I asked her why it was 3 inches deeper on 1 side than on the other.  Her reply??  “Uhhh – that’s how they come in.  The other ones in the cooler are like that too”..  Ooooo baby-gurl…no they don’t sweety!  When I got home, I removed all frosting from the cake and discovered that the 3” height difference from 1 end to the other was allllll frosting!!  And let’s not over look the chewed corners on the cake board.  Honest to goodness…I learned very quickly that a) I don’t charge nearly enough and I’m way better at this cake thing than I give myself credit for.  When everything was scraped off of the hydious mess and a crumb coat was applied, I had no less than 4 heaping cups of frosting left over to re-frost the cake with.  4 CUPS!!! ARE YOU FREAKIN KIDDING??!!!  What can I expect, though, from a cake that looks like it was frosted with a paint roller??  The finished product worked out for the best and she was happy with it all the same.  Thankfully – it all ended well….but I will never buy a superstore cake again.