Yes, I spent way too much time on this cake, but my son only turns one once. The characters are all fondant. The cake is buttermilk devil’s food, iced in white chocolate cream cheese icing. The cupcakes are Funfetti with buttercream. The kids loved the cupcakes and the adults loved the cake!
My son’s 1st birthday November 24, 2008
Mmmmm…Pumpkin Cupcakes November 21, 2008
Last year for my work Thanksgiving party, I made a pumpkin roll cake. It was delicious. When I was hired by my husband’s company to provide their cake for Thanksgiving, I thought of doing it again. I didn’t though because my company did a potluck and his company is having a professionally catered event and I wasn’t sure how to fancy up the pumpkin roll
Many hours on Flickr have taught me the current popularity of a cupcake tower, so that is the theme I decided to go with.
I originally was going to use the Ginger-Cream filled Pumpkin Cupcakes byChocylit. I had never cooked with fresh ginger before, it made the whole house smell so good. Instead of the chocolate ganache I used cream cheese icing. The cupcakes turned out wonderful but the hint of ginger was so slight, I decided not to fill the cupcakes for my actual order.
The cream cheese icing recipe I originally used didn’t make much icing so instead of fancy swirls, I just spread on the icing on as neatly as I could. The finished project was not incredibly professional looking, although it was tasty. I am so glad I did a trial run, one should always practice before trying something new.
I also originally planned to donate the practice batch to the Ronald McDonald House, but forgot to drop them off. By the time I remembered, the candy corns had started to melt and left orange stripes on the cupcakes. The other problem is that the nutmeg I sprinkled on top looked more like dirt than decoration. It was tasty just not the appetizing.
For the second run, I used the Martha Stewart Pumpkin cupcake recipe. It is delicious and not very complicated. I used a cookie scoop to make sure I used the same amount of batter in each cupcake. Two scoops in each resulted in 32 cupcakes instead of the 18 her reciepe states it will yield.
The Wilton recipe ofcream cheese icing was my base. I ommited the orange juice and zest. Instead I used vanilla, cinnamon (about 1/2 tsp.), nutmeg (about 1/4 tsp.) and allspice (about 1/4 tsp.). It made a pretty and delicious icing.
My husband delivered everything to his office so I didn’t see the final set-up. Here is the practice run I did at home though:
At K-Mart I discovered this handy cupcake carrier. It uses a cupcake tin for the bottom layer and then has a plastic tray for the second layer. The lid snaps all the layers together. It only holds 24 cupcakes, so I had to improvise with a baking sheet for the rest of my cupcakes.
Cupcake Papers November 18, 2008
My husband’s work hired me to do cakes for three events this fall. This Friday I am making a cupcake tower of pumpkin flavored cupcakes and most likely cream cheese icing. The icing flavor is still up in the air.
I was hoping to find some pretty cupcake papers but all I could find locally were pastels, silver foil, or ones appropriate for kid birthday parties. I happened to stop into Pier 1 tonight and the fall things were on clearance. They had some beautiful Halloween cupcake papers 75% off. There was only one box left, but I snatched them up for next time.
My next stop was Hobby Lobby, their fall things were also on sale. They had gold papers with maroon and green leaves on them. They also had sunflower papers. I bought 5 packages of 50 papers for $2.50. I am using the leaf papers on Friday, the sunflowers could be used for a fall or summer theme, whichever comes up first. If you go to your Hobby Lobby, they weren’t in the cake decorating section, they were in the front near the fall decoration items.
Normally I don’t stock up on things, but since I had such trouble finding them, I feel it was worth it.
***
DC Rose, thank you for the award. I have tried to comment on you blog several times, but my computer locks up every time I visit your blog.
Sarah-Jane Cake November 7, 2008
I created my first “Sarah-Jane”cake today. It was a chocolate cake with chocolate ganache between the layers. The icing was cream cheese & white chocolate. Then I used white chocolate shards and curls to decorate the cake. It turned out quite beautiful.
I learned a little more about making the shards and can’t wait to try this cake again. Thank you Sarah-Jane of Cake That! for the idea.
