Snickers Anyone???

Saw a recipe for snickers cupcakes and I HAD to make them, because what is better than chocolate, caramel and peanuts??? I think I may have a new favorite cupcake, because these were YUMMY! The cupcake is chocolate with a 1/3 of a mini snickers bar hiding inside. The frosting is buttercream drizzled with caramel sauce, chocolate sauce and a few roasted peanuts.

A Shower With Champagne and Bows!

I did a cake and cupcakes for a bridal shower this week. This was my first tiered fondant cake and I really liked the way it turned out! We wanted to do some of the champagne cupcakes, but not the entire cake, so I did a 2 tier yellow cake with almond buttercream icing, and champagne cupcakes with champagne icing. All the decorations are fondant.

Champagne wishes and cake dreams

I wanted to try out a new recipe for some cupcakes that I wanted to do for a wedding shower next weekend, Champagne Cupcakes! Yep, there is champagne in the cake batter and the icing. After making the sample cupcakes, I had some leftover batter so I decided to make a 6 inch cake for us. The cake is a yellow champagne cake, and there is champagne buttercream icing with fresh strawberries between layers (I figured, what goes better with champagne? Strawberries!) The cake is covered in fondant.

Off to the races

My husband is a big NASCAR fan, and is headed to the Daytona 500 this weekend. I thought I'd surprise him with a cake to take down and eat while "tailgating" for the race. The cake is a yellow cake, and the icing is a Bourbon Buttercream icing (yep what better for the race than a cake with booze in the icing!). The number 14 (Go Tony) is fondant. The checkered flag border at the bottom is a ribbon.

Valentines Sweets

For Valentine's Day I wanted to make some sweets for my son's class at school. I made cookies for the kids and cupcakes for the teachers. The cookies are sugar cookies with royal icing, and the cupcakes are strawberry cake with either buttercream icing or strawberry buttercream icing.

Ready For Spring

Well Mother Nature may not be ready for spring (we are under a winter weather advisory for snow tonight) but I am! I thought I'd brighten our day and try out some new techniques! Here is the finished product:

We have roses, hydrangea and chrysanthemum!
Here  is a little better detail of the roses

The hydrangea

And the chrysanthemum (I did 2 versions)

The cakes are yellow cake with an almond buttercream frosting, according to my little taste testers quality control agents they taste as good as they look!

A Day of Firsts....

Sunday was a day of firsts for me. I made homemade cinnamon rolls for the first time...and after a cake mishap I made my first batch of cake balls.

My cinnamon rolls looked pretty...but were quite dry. I'm in the search for a better recipe. The good news was I actually turned flour and milk into dough..that rose and everything! (The last time I tried to make dough--years ago--I couldn't get it to rise properly...this is 1/2 the battle for good baked bread!)

And the cake balls...I was going to make another football cake for the Superbowl gathering we were attending. Unfortunately my cake decided not to cooperate and broke in half. Well, when life gives you a broken cake...make cake balls! I had never made cake balls, but they sounded easy! The actual making and forming of the balls was easy, the hard part was the coating and decorating. I couldn't get my chocolate as smooth and I would like, and I found just how difficult it is to try and pipe on melted chocolate--NOT an easy task! The final result...They tasted good...and you could mostly tell they were supposed to be footballs...but I'm going to have to do some work on these!

Lots and Lots of Chocolate!

Wanted to make cupcakes...for some reason I feel better when I eat a cupcake opposed to a slice of cake...and I wanted chocolate...lots and lots of chocolate. This is a chocolate cupcake with white chocolate icing sprinkled with cocoa powder.

I have to say that I'm not a big fan of the icing, and will be looking for a new recipe. This one called for granulated sugar, which left the icing grainy, and I had to used quite a bit of powdered sugar to thicken it up. Its still yummy....but I think could be much better.

Coconut Awesomeness

I made my first coconut cake for Christmas...and I even impressed myself! It was a longer process than I thought: I made the cake and glazed it, let it sit for 2 days, then iced it and it was ready to go. I must say it was worth the labor/wait! I have always been indifferent on coconut cake...I am now a fan!