Chocolate and Vanilla Swirl Cupcakes - July 2012

I made these cupcakes for my daughter, Cara, to share with her friends at her Bible study on her birthday.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For these cupcakes I used the rest of the cupcake liners that I had leftover from making my sister, Valerie's, shoe cupcakes (see this post).  I think these red and white polka dot liners are so cute.  I baked the round cupcakes in regular muffin tins.  For the square cupcakes I filled a 10x10 square pan with 25 of the cupcake liners.  I filled the liners with the batter, and as they baked they expanded against each other and ended up square [some turned out better squares than others :) ].  After they were done baking I let the cupcakes cool completely.

 

I filled a piping bag with chocolate buttercream icing and used a large star tip to pipe swirls of icing on (almost all of ) the round cupcakes.  When I started running low on the chocolate buttercream I filled the piping bag with vanilla buttercream without cleaning the chocolate out.  So, that resulted in the striping of the chocolate and vanilla swirls on most of the square cupcakes.  The last of the square cupcakes ended up with just vanilla icing swirls as the chocolate was used up by that point.

 

After I piped the icing swirls on all the cupcakes I topped them with some red sugar sprinkles to bring in some of the color and style from the liners.

 

Cara had a happy birthday and everyone enjoyed the cupcakes!  :)

(I created my animated name at this site.)

Are You Seeing Spots? - June 2009

I made this polka dot cake for my sister, Valerie's, birthday.  We were also celebrating my brother-in-law, Josh's, birthday, so I added a little something on the cake for him too (see further down in the post).

Below is the 'little something' I added for Josh.  He is a Denver Broncos fan,

so I made a watermark of a football with the word BRONCOS on it on one of the orange spots.  :)

I had to refrigerate the cake because of the ganache I used in between the layers.  So, the moisture on the icing and fondant made the cake look shinier (below) when I brought it to the party, which wasn't a big deal.  Unfortunately though, it also 'erased' my Broncos watermark, so I just had to show Josh the picture I took of it beforehand.  :(

More details to come.  :)

[Right now I'm just trying to get everything on the blog, then I'll go back and fill in details; you can read a little longer explanation here if you want. BUT if you have any questions in the meantime, in general or about this cake, please feel free to email me by clicking on the 'Contact Me' tab at the top of the page and using the email address found there, and I will try to get back with you as soon as possible. Or you can always ask questions or leave a comment about this cake by clicking the comments link at the end of this post. :) ]

Chocolate Dots - June 2008

I made this chocolate cake for my sister, Valerie's, birthday.  After tasting my other sister, Casandra's, lingerie shower cake a few months before (see the Ooo La La - Lingerie Shower post), Valerie said that she wanted the same flavor for her birthday.  So, this is a chocolate cake made in the Fanci-Fill pan, topped with chocolate buttercream icing, and filled with the chocolate raspberry mousse-like filling that the lingerie shower cake had.

After the cake was baked, filled, stacked, crumb coated, and iced I piped the dots on the sides and top of the cake.  I used a few different sized round tips so I could have some dots bigger than others.  I wanted the dots to just look randomly placed with no real pattern to them, which I think I achieved on the sides of the cake.  When I did the top of the cake though and made the dots go in towards the middle of the circle I unknowingly made it look like the negative space was a flower, I guess not so random as I thought.  :)

After the dots were piped on the cake I let them set a little and then went around to each and lightly tapped down the little peak that was left [before that it kind of looked porcupine-ish :) ].  I used the large round tip to make dots around the base of the cake with a little space in between each.  My original plan was to paint the dots silver, but I had the wrong kind of silver dust.  I tested a couple just making them shimmery silver, but you couldn't really see it, and I realized I liked the way it looked all chocolate anyway.  :)

Now, unfortunately when I was making the filling something did not go the same.  I don't know if the ratio of pudding to whipped cream was off or if I mixed it too much or what, but when we cut into the cake the filling was very soupy :( .  It still tasted good, it just wasn't as pretty when cut into, and it was messy.

Valerie really liked the cake and didn't even mind the runny filling, what a great sister!  :)