easy there cupcake

muppet. cupcakes.

2012-01-04T14:42:00.001-08:00

I have been waiting to make these forever. I've been a Muppet fan for just as long. David & I used to watch Muppet Babies as kids on Saturday mornings. Our parents took us to see Muppet Babies Live at The Meadowlands. I remember watching Muppet Frog Prince on TV & some episodes of the Muppet Show. We also especially loved Muppet Family Christmas, the holiday movie when all the Muppets (ever--Fraggles & Sesame Street included) come to Fozzie's mom's (Emily Bear's) house (Thank you, Caitlin, for the link!). David & I have a special place in our hearts for Muppet Treasure Island, an often-overlooked Muppet Treasure (eh??? fun-nee!). I remember going crazy over Weezer's video with the Muppets (pretty much my 2 favorite things at the time) for Keep Fishin', and for the great connection my college roommate, Caitlin, and I had (have) over our mutual love for Muppets. We watched the Mahna Mahna and Mr. Bassman videos probably once daily our first month living together. I also had an intro song to my radio show that she and my other college friends helped me record for "Elyse's Muppet Radio Show."

...So it only makes sense that I'd want to make Muppet cupcakes!! I don't know what took me so long! But it probably had something to do with the Muppet Movie coming out, and then Bakerella doing Muppet Cake Pops. Anyway, it's time to get things started!!

First things first, here I am mixing the cake batter:

My parents got me these awesome mixing sticks for Christmas. They look like drumsticks on one end and one has a music note cut out of the spoon:

So there's a cookin' end and a rockin' end:

Haha. I love it!

Then I switched to the hand-held mixer. Once the cupcakes were done, I mixed up a dixie cup of vanilla frosting & green food coloring. I piped black icing onto white melting chocolates, and cut out collars from green sugar paper (my first time using it!).

Hi-ho, Kermit! Except he has a swirl on his face, and no mouth. So I cut out some red sugar paper:

He kind of looks like anime-Kermit here. I made mini versions of all of them, too. For mini-Kermit I used coconut M&Ms (for the white ones--I could have just bought white regular m&ms at Fuzziwigs, but I'd already been there twice in preparation for my magnum opus, so I got these from CVS which is closer to my house) and edible-ink markers for the pupils!

(I had left my camera at Mike's from taking pictures of the dinner we cooked the night before--spinach & turkey bacon macaroni & cheese, thanks for asking--and the sugar paper collar had wilted overnight! Now I know that about sugar paper!)

Then I tried Fozzie. I got so excited when I was at Target the other day browsing through the 50%-off Christmas selection & I saw Reese's Bells on sale! I didn't even remember that these were out, and the fact that they were half-off was like a post-Christmas present from Target to me. Thank you, Target. They made perfect Fozzie hats!!

His ears are orange melting chocolates with black icing piped on, and his nose, eyelids and mouth are sugar paper.

It makes me so happy when they come out just how I wanted!! Hey friends!

Oh, hey, little Fozzie! I had these Wilton candy eyes (they used to make smaller ones but I could find them NOWHERE) that looked like they'd been on the shelf for a while and the pupils were sort of green and dusty-looking. Fortunately my edible-ink marker did the trick! I also used one of those sugar dots from the receipt-tape-looking sheet of different colored dots... You know what I'm talking about? That old-fashioned penny candy stuff. That was a perfect nose. I used the bag of 2 sheets absolutely once. Actually twice, I made 2 mini Fozzies. I have so much candy left over. Anyone want to come over?

The hat, another perfect Reese's creation, is an Unwrapped Mini Reese's. I had to buy a whole zip-top bag. I know, I didn't want to buy SO MANY but... I actually really did... And I actually really love them. I mean, those mini Reeses with the wrapper just slowed me down! I have to thank Bakerella for the hat idea though, she used them on her Fozzie cake pops and they just look perfect and adorable! I'm so glad they worked here, too!

The next day (yes, it took me a few days... decorating is exhausting!) I made Rowlf. I realize his face should be a little lighter and his ears darker, but what are ya gonna do? I used what I had. I love how the chocolate chips in the frosting makes him look furry! I bought Jordan Almonds way back because I thought they'd make perfect Rowlf eyes (a little Rowlf history: his eyes are spoons, or at least they're exactly spoon-shaped, and he was the mascot for some dog food ads in the 60's, and was even a co-star on the Jimmy Dean show, a variety show from the same time). His nose is a dark chocolate malt ball, and his ears are flattened Tootsie Rolls.

Mini-Rowlf has jelly bean eyes (David's idea!!), a coconut M&M nose, and cut-out Tootsie Roll ears (I got fancy and used a tiny cookie cutter).

I also found out flattened Tootsie Rolls melt when enclosed overnight. Turns out they have a lot in common with sugar paper. And his eye is a little lazy, but we'll forgive him.

Then it was diva time. Miss Piggy actually required a LOT of work. And I'm sure she wouldn't have it any other way. I made a light pink/orange color for her piggie complexion, then halved a marshmallow for her nose (it was a last-minute inspiration when I remembered that I had a bag of marshmallows in my room. I asked my dad to buy them for me a while back when I wanted to get in the Christmas spirit, and big marshmallows in my hot chocolate is a fond Christmassy memory).

Then I took some white coconut M&Ms and drew black pupils with blue irises on them with edible-ink marker, then half-dipped them in purple melting chocolates for her eyelids.

Complicated stuff! This might be rocket science!

I tried to draw on little eyelashes with black marker but melting chocolate isn't a big fan of markers. Then, and this gets me the most excited (about Piggy, anyway), I put peach (I think) gummies on her head for ears. They look the most Muppet-like out of everything! The texture, I mean. I had to prop them up with marshmallows. Good thing I had them!

Piggy has so many hairstyles, I didn't know which one to use. Of course I just went with the easiest. I mean, classiest:

O and of course I added pearls! Sprinkles, actually, "pearlized" sprinkles.

Aw! I used an ear as little Piggy's nose, and the eyes are the Wilton candy eyes (given the same treatment). I used some pink fondant I wanted to try as her ears, and it smelled weird and plastic-y, but it was easy to mold and looked pretty cool.

Kermieeeeee!

Gonzo looks so funny in steps. I first put blue icing on, then rolled the edges in blue sanding sugar. I used white melting chocolates for his eyes, and (also a last-minute inspiration) banana Runts as eyelids!

Sugar paper mouth.. and the nose...

A blue Jolly Rancher! Mike gave me that idea. I thought maybe I could find a blue Tootsie Roll, but alas the wrapper is blue and the Tootsie is white. He still didn't look just right without those head feathers! So, another last-minute idea, I used 2 blue jellybeans!

O yay! He just looks so Gonzo-y!

I'm not as crazy about mini-Gonzo. He looks, well, we'll just say "dazed," and his jelly bean nose just isn't doing it for me. I stuck a fish candy in his head as the feathers, which makes me laugh.

Finally, on the third day, though I wanted to make the Mahna Mahna "Snowths" (the pink guys), chickens, Sweetums, and well I guess every Muppet ever, I settled on ONE non-always-in-the-spotlight Muppet. Lew Zealand. He wears a collar, like an old-fashioned white clown collar, and throws fish.

There's my pieces for him. Then I realized he kind of just looks like Ernie with a moustache. I used coconut M&Ms and a red gumball. Of course I put an extra cupcake holder around him to look like the collar (I was pretty excited about that part).

And, also of course, I put little candy fish around him, since he's just not Lew Zealand without his fish.

I put them on a mini cupcake just for fun:

Mike got me a new camera for Christmas, by the way, so all my pictures are nice and crisp & clear! This fish one (above) especially came out nice.

Then, as per Mike's suggestion so I wasn't driving myself crazy trying to make more Muppets or letting some bald cupcakes go to waste, I iced the leftovers and wrote "The Muppets" on them.

And here they all are! Together!

I brought them to work (so we wouldn't devour them here at home) and my coworkers just LOVED them. It made me feel so great. They all came to the break room to admire them, loudly and excitedly, and I ate it all up. (Actually, I didn't eat any. I made myself a mini Fozzie when I got home and ate that! It was pretty delicious with the Reese's cup and the M&Ms! I took the eyes off though!).

Also, I can't believe I frog-ot (haha) to mention how much I love Jim Henson. He is absolutely one of my favorite people--he seemed like such a loving, creative, youthful individual who made the world so fun and beautiful. Thank you, Jim Henson. :)

halloween 2011!!!

2011-11-09T12:05:00.000-08:00

I love Halloween! This year I made my first scarecrow! A few kids actually got scared (and so did I, twice in one day.. actually twice within 10 minutes!) which left me thoroughly satisfied. Planning for this holiday began early for me when I was at Party City and saw Wilton Icing Knives. I wasn't sure what I'd do with them, but I knew it was a good idea just to have them. Then my friend Jon posted this link to my facebook for Frankenstein marshmallow pops. I tried these out before Halloween:
Love those Wilton candy eyes!! I added silver sprinkles as the bolts. I also bought two Halloween magazines--Martha Stewart and Taste of Home. They always have great ideas. Yes, it would be a good Halloween.

Mike and I bought a build-your-own haunted gingerbread house kit from the grocery store.
It came with the walls of the house, black & orange icing, sprinkles, jelly beans, sugar ghosts, jack-o-lantern gumballs and candy corn.

In this spooky picture, you can see my spooky candle that melts red! I got it 50% off at Yankee Candle. I looked it up on their website & can't find Halloween stuff anymore, but they had a lot of cute skeleton themed stuff, and it went on sale pretty close to Halloween.
Of course I got into the spirit of things by wearing my bunny ears (we always have some kind of costume lying around).
Here we are, I'm holding one of the cute sugar ghosts:
You can also see our cute Halloween dishtowel on the oven handle.
Well here's the house!
Then we decorated it:
Ooooooh! Spooky! All the icing was dripping off and the decorations (especially the jellybeans) were not sticking. Oh well! We kept it in the fridge that night. Here's what Mike put on the roof:

I thought it was a nice touch! Spooky spider! I took a picture of the 2 of us with our house:
Ha, ha, Mike.
That's better. That was that for the house. We almost forgot to bring it out for the party! The day of the party (or the day before, since the big crazy snowstorm pretty much snowed everyone in, giving me more prep time) I made the pretzel rod witch fingers. I got the mold at AC Moore and the candy melts at Michaels (and another bag at Reny's when we were visiting Portland, ME).

This was my first time using two different colored chocolate melts (actually they were both vanilla-flavored, I think) in one mold. They all say to use a brush, but I didn't want to buy a new paintbrush or use an older one even though I washed them... So I just used a spoon as usual but I was very careful, and wiped off a lot of the extraneous parts with a paper towel.

Oooh! They came out so good! :) I put them all together in a jar with some pumpkin pie-flavored popcorn (also from our Maine trip):
Then I made the cupcakes (which is what this blog is really about)!!
Yum! These were pumpkin spice cupcakes from the Sprinkles mix! What I love about Sprinkles is their mixes come in big tubes and have the recipe for from-scratch icing, so you can feel proud & say you made at least some of it from scratch. It also bakes 12 cupcakes, so if you're only expecting a small crowd, you don't have to eat the other 12 yourself ;)

Mike found the wrappers for me--I'd seen them at Stop & Shop and had been looking for them all month, until he found them at Shaw's (again, in Maine). My friend Katherine and I had just been talking about how some wrappers are so cute, but once you bake them, the oil seeps through and you can't see the cute decorations anymore (I think I mentioned this in the post I did about the malted cupcakes). Well these were tin AND in Halloween colors!

I had also bought this cardboard cupcake tower at Michaels. Mike helped me set it up and I put my cupcakes on it, along with the candy knives!

Spooooky! I also put some red icing dripping down the stabbed cupcakes, and on some extra knives I had.
Michaels also had these great wooden boxes in the shape of coffins! I bought two and painted them. I put a Hershey's mix inside and made a little gravestone:
Oh, I crack myself up!
Then I made the marshmallow Frankensteins! The hair kept making me laugh because they ended up looking like nice gentlemen instead of scary monsters.
I ran out of candy eyes :( so I used chocolate chips on some of them. I thought they looked like girls so I gave them red lips! The cool silhouette border is actually a bunch of cupcake wrappers connected to each other. They were part of Chef Duff's cake and cupcake line, but they were too big for my cupcakes. Here's a Frankenstein I gave the Flock of Seagulls haircut to:
We also had spooky cocktails!
I got the idea from Dylan's Candy Bar (which I will post about at a later date). Dylan Lauren has a book out and had these wax lips on the rim of a drink as a suggestion for a Halloween party! Duly noted, Dylan! This was garnishing a cocktail I came up with: pumpkin liqueur, light cream and marshmallow vodka. Yum! It was a party favorite :) I called it Pumpkin Cream. Or, actually, Pumpkin Scream (for Halloween).

Funny enough, the only thing I ended up getting out of the Martha Stewart magazine was the idea for hanging paper bats above the cocktail area.
There was a template and I cut them out of construction paper. How cute!!

And, of course, our costumes (including Mike's cats):

Chunks as a bull, I guess, with a cowboy riding on him! Or just a giant cat with a cowboy riding him... or a regular-sized cat with a tiny man...
Cat, as a banana split:
Me & Mike as Peg and Al Bundy:
My brothers, David (as a bunny) and Hiro (as a Japanese street vendor) with me:
And my friends Kim (as Edward Scissorhands) and Katherine (as Little Red Riding Hood)!
There were other friends who I didn't get pictures of, but it was a very fun night indeed. Hope you had a spooky and fun Halloween!!

how 'bout them apples? (two cooking adventures in one post!!)

2011-11-07T10:42:00.000-08:00

I went apple picking for the first time in my life last month. Apparently apple picking season is over come October, but Mike & I didn't realize this and got a stick and a bag (an expensive bag) and went about rattling the trees on Dr. Davies Farm.
We came right when a school was leaving. There were a lot of little apples in piles at the base of the trees.
The stick with the picker part was so long!
But I was able to use it!
Heck, we got a lot!
We ended up getting 52 apples. Whoa. Here I am with twins:
It was a fun day :)
Mike & I aren't huge apple enthusiasts, but you'd think we were, what with 52 apples and all. Neither one of us even likes apple pie, so we looked online for some alternative recipes.

APPLE CRISP

First, of course, you make a face on your apple with the peeler. And you put on your apple apron. Haha. Then you peel the rest of the skin off.
Naked apples!!
Mike begins a long night of chopping:
Pecans, then the apples.
And the pecans go in with the brown sugar.
Oh, gee! I needed a lemon.
How'd that get in there? Must have found a lemon tree among the apples ;)
Here I am mixing everything together with my clean hands.
We set out to make one pie. We had too much and ended up making two!
Here's Mike chopping again...
Butter this time. For the crisp!
Butter and flour, etc.... I thought it was a good idea to mix with my hands to really get the butter through.
Mike had to scrape chunks off my fingers, but it was fun. Then we sprinkle it on top of the pies!
Then they go in the oven!
And while you wait, I suggest picking up some caramel dip (Mike's idea):
We had some Reeses Pieces left over from another project and it was a great combination.

Yum!
Oh! Crisps are done!
We served ours with butter pecan ice cream and cool whip :)
Open up! Haha.
Then of course we made caramel apples a few days later!

CARAMEL APPLES

This is what we used:
We made a little race out of unwrapping the individual caramels :)
Chunks (Mike's cat) wanted in on it...
Then I washed the apples.
We put wooden skewers into the 4 apples (don't worry, we didn't really lick them)
They look pretty fancy already:
While I microwave the caramel & a little bit of water (it looks gross)...
Mike crushes the Reeses Pieces (Chunks wants to help again)

We didn't have to de-wax the apples or anything because they're fresh from trees! Here I am happily covering an apple in caramel. It's harder than it looks!
The caramel was thick & I found it hard to twist the stick & distribute it evenly. Oh well! It looks pretty anyway!
Mike always makes things look easier, especially after I've been struggling.
Ta-Da!!
We had to cut the skewers so they'd fit in my cupcake courier to bring home. Later we cut them up and ate them in sections... and it was delicious!

maltshop memories

2011-09-01T16:02:00.000-07:00

It has been OVER A YEAR since I've posted anything and boy, I feel really badly about this. What can I say? I finally finished my master's degree in early childhood education and early childhood special education. YAY!!! I graduated this past May and still had two state exams to take (out of 4 for NYS teacher certification) and finally took my last one in July, and found out in August that I passed it. PHEW! Now I'm just waiting for the OK from NYS to tell me that I'm certified (believe me, I have applied to places). So, since I have no teaching job for the fall, I am essentially back to where I was before I was in school. Working at a bookstore and not doing much else. So now I have time for blogging, baking (and eating) cupcakes, playing guitar & learning banjo, playing shows (at bars AND toy stores), etc etc etc. So hello everyone once again, and here is my latest cupcake adventure:

Chocolate Malted Cupcakes!!

I was flipping through Martha Stewart's cupcake book looking for a new recipe to try. My boyfriend Mike loves anything malted (whoppers, milkshakes, beer) so I thought I'd give the chocolate malted cupcakes a whirl and see how he liked them. He works at a supermarket so I met him as he got off his shift & he got me to the ingredients right quick! Without Mike I would've been wandering around the store squinting at aisle signs like an idiot for half an hour.

Here he is in his "I'm ready to bake" stance. Notice the seated position and the beer in one hand.

Here I am looking like Julia Child. I was still in my work clothes--fortunately I got this cute red apple apron from Target a few months ago. Martha says to mix the dry stuff first, so here I am whisking flour, cocoa, sugar (granulated and light brown), baking soda and salt. I had Mike measure out the malted milk powder and liquid milk since he likes malt so much.

And whisking, too! We're already making such a mess. Then I combined the dry bowl with the milk bowl and started adding the 3 eggs.

Then came a surprising ingredient, but one I'm sure really made these cupcakes.

Sour cream!

I couldn't believe how moist and rich these cupcakes were. Yum yum yum! Let's continue...

Martha also suggests using an ice cream scoop to measure out just enough batter for each cupcake. Great tip! Thanks, Martha! Except of course it was for a previous recipe I'd done (the classic yellow on her website, which I'll discuss later) that was only for 12 cupcakes... This recipe makes "about 28." So we made 24 plus three large cupcakes (in my large 6-cupcake tin).

So that's about a scoop and a half each. Into the oven you go! Then it was time for the frosting. This is one of my favorite things about cupcakes. For what is a cupcake without its frosting? A sad little cakey muffin. (Still very tasty, though. Like these. For once I wasn't eating a cupcake solely as an excuse to eat frosting).

Martha Stewart's frostings usually call for a ton of soft unsalted butter and confectioner's sugar. I guess that's what most frostings call for, period. I don't have a lot of frosting-making experience outside of my Martha book. I tried vegan frosting once but I wasn't very happy with the outcome. Remind me to try that again.

So here's Mike sifting 4 cups of confectioner's sugar:

One cup at a time. He actually enjoyed this. I mean, I don't hate it, but it was very nice to have helping hands :) I just realized that I always bake alone, and having some help not only makes everything go quicker, it's also so much more fun!

Butter, sugar, vanilla. Yum, yum, yum! Meanwhile, we took the cupcakes out of the oven and I had Mike put them on the wire racks to cool.

Frosting's ready, cupcakes are ready...

We did some dishes and cleaned up while the cupcakes cooled enough to get frosted.

Here I am with my trusty offset spatula. Where would I be without it? Mike got me a pastry bag a few months ago that I tried using once. I used it to make little mitten and house decorations on cupcakes for my friends' housewarming party (get it? houses and mittens?), which I will post later, but I haven't yet used it for the whole top of a cupcake, which I really want to do. Anyway...

Here they all are, 24 regular-sized cupcakes, all frosted with that lovely delicious Fluffy Vanilla Frosting (also from Martha's book). Martha puts sprinkles on them for decorations. While Mike & I were at the supermarket, I had an idea.

I thought it'd be cute to put chocolate shavings on top. We'd just watched our first full episode of Cupcake Wars (maybe he'd seen it before, I don't remember, but I certainly hadn't seen a full episode, which doesn't make much sense, considering how much I love cupcakes and how often people who know me tell me to watch it), and I was feeling pretty inspired. That (and my sudden freeing up of time) is what really made me want to get back to this blog.

So, I know, chocolate shavings aren't Cupcake Wars contender-worthy, but it was my little gourmet-ish touch. So Mike took me to the aisle where they have chocolate bars. He had been wanting to try the Cadbury chocolate bar, so we got that. (He doesn't eat candy or dessert really EVER, but he does now, because he's dating me). While exiting the aisle, I stopped, whacked his arm and said, "You know what would really be great?? Whoppers!!" He agreed (since that's pretty much his favorite candy) and we bought a box.

(This was the first plate. I realized after this that I should put the shavings on before the Whoppers.)

(Mike's chocolate shavings technique is way better than mine.)

(Pre-Whoppers)

Then on the drive home I whacked his arm again and said, "You know what else would be great? Straws!! To make them look like little milkshakes!" So he helped me cut the straws to little sizes and bent them (of course we keep bendy straws at my house) and we stuck them into each cupcake with chocolate shavings and a malt ball on top. And I thought, Martha Stewart didn't think of that. ;)

By now we hadn't tasted them yet. My brother David had walked in asking if he & his husband Hiro could try one and I said, "No, we have to finish decorating them!" Well after Mike & I finished one plate, we tried them. Then we told David.

And then, dear bloggers, it was actually Mike's idea to stick two straws into one cupcake and take this picture:

Aww....

We made so many, I took them into work the next day. I really do think these were the best cupcakes I've ever made. So moist, so tasty, the frosting was great, the silver liners made them look fancy (thanks to Katherine for that suggestion--she's on a cupcake wrapper kick & noticed, as was my complaint too, that cute decorated cupcake wrappers always come out oily and blotted so you can't even see the cute decoration anymore! So she said your only sure bet is metallic wrappers. If anyone has tips for how not to grease up your paper wrappers and still have them come off without destroying the cupcake, please let me know!), plus they were so much fun to make. Just delightful!

Once again I used my Cupcake Courier from Bed, Bath & Beyond that my parents got me a few years ago. I can't live without it... and transport cupcakes. And what did we do with those 3 large cupcakes I mentioned?

Well, Mike bought some sprinkles when they were a new product at the supermarket and surprised me with them. They were Barn Pals and Zoo Accents. So cute!!

Barn Pals has chicks, cows, pigs and bunnies. Zoo Accents (I love that name) has gorillas, elephants, lions and dolphins.

We used the rest of the frosting to make 3 different colors and use the sprinkles. Mike wanted to use the cows (black & white) & decided that black would be an appetizing color. "No one ever uses black, so I thought it would look really cool," he says.

What I love most about his cupcake is the square of chocolate he put on the top.

I was laughing at him for doing black, though. It got all melty and I really couldn't stop laughing.

Especially compared to the other cupcakes we made:

My pink cupcake with pink & white piggies, and our (I frosted it and he chose the sprinkles) blue cupcake with blue & green dolphins.

He said he didn't use the offset spatula so that explains his.

But all together they don't look so bad!

You gotta love big cupcakes!!

futurama returns, and so do my cupcakes!

2010-07-30T17:33:00.001-07:00

So, yeah. I haven't made cupcakes in a while. But I've been busy being social! With the return of Futurama, I decided to make themed cupcakes again. Of course Futurama came back the day I left to visit my brother in Japan. Then I was jet-lagged for the next week. After that I don't really have an excuse except I finally got an event to bring these cupcakes to! Allen & Joe, 2 of my coworkers, had their last day working with us today. And Joe & I have discussed Futurama many times at work. So I made these last night.

I used a box cake mix. Whenever I decorate, I don't do "from scratch." Too much time!! So here's how I brought Futurama to culinary life.

By the way, if you're not familiar with these characters, you can catch the show on Comedy Central at 10pm on Thursday nights! Or right now you can do a google image search or something to see pictures of them!

My first attempt was Bender. This didn't go too well.

Hahahaha. Yikes. I got pretty depressed after this one. Then I tried again:

Aaaaaah! This one makes me so happy!!! Here's what happened: (there's a little Monk reference for those of you who used to watch Monk) Bender totally needed a better mouth. I bought a few different colored bags of melting chocolates (white, purple, orange) thinking I'd use them for the eyes and hair (Leela & Fry). But I was sure I was awful at that whole "just melt the chocolates in a ziploc bag and snip the corner to trace any shape at all, easy as 1, 2, 3!" I think it's because the first time I tried it, I followed the directions and microwaved it for what turned out to be way too long so the chocolate melted right through the bag without my knowledge and I got very hot melted chocolate all over my hands. That might have something to do with it.

Well I have gumption if anything, so I tried, tried again. Really all it took was microwaving it for less time. So I made a bunch of oval shapes for Bender's mouth and got that shape up there. Then I took a toothpick and scratched little lines in it for his "teeth." As for the antenna:

Are you familiar with Pocky? The amazing Japanese snack that consists of a thin biscuit dipped in chocolate? For some reason I think the crowd that's into Futurama knows Pocky very well. Anyway, it turns out Pocky is a cupcake-decorator's best friend. Look what can be done!

I dipped part of the Pocky in white icing and rolled it around in silver sprinkles. Then I snapped off half of it and stuck the rest into Bender's head. It worked!!

Then I did Dr. Zoidberg, which was the most satisfyingly simple character to make. Pink icing and pink Good & Plenty's. (Would that be the good part or the plenty part? I think they're both good... But I like how the white ones leave white on my tongue..)

Woop woop woop!

Then I did Nibbler, which is my favorite as far as these cupcakes are concerned.

Vanilla & chocolate frosting, black icing, 2 Necco wafers (I forgot to mention I've been using those as the eyes for everyone. And I thought Necco was a useless candy!), a Pocky, cut pieces of a white melting chocolate (as the fangs) and a white M&M! I got the M&M to stick with--ready??--melting chocolate AS GLUE! Yeah I know it's been done before, but I haven't done it before, and it was really exciting that it worked. See?

I love it!!

Of course I had to make Hypnotoad. Of course!!

I was pretty excited over making this one, and getting the icing to pull into a lip just right.. and using sprinkles as the brown spots--I liked keeping the cupcake element in the design!

So here's what I had so far:

Oh except I'd added Bender's mouth, too. Then it was time for the really tricky ones. Fry & Leela!

Here's my ziploc (oh, I'm sorry, it's actually Hefty!) pastry bag.. and my sketch of Leela's hair, with two of the FIVE Leela hairs I made (I put a lot of chocolate in there, I didn't want to waste it. Plus I thought I'd probably done some of them terribly wrong and I wanted options). I then put the wax sheet on a magazine in the fridge. The next morning my dad asked me if I knew why the Williams-Sonoma catalog was in the fridge. He was afraid my mom had gone crazy.

So here she is, I know, it doesn't do her justice, but I think the continued use of Good & Plenty was quite effective!! If she were blue she'd totally look like Smurfette. Except a cyclops. Cyclops Smurfette.

Here's Fry's hair, followed by the Fry cupcake:

Again, the frosting lip looks great here (sorry!! I don't mean to brag!! I'm just really happy!) which was kind of an accident. Serendipity, we call it. But I had to add the black icing just to make it not look like a fleshy mess:

Thank you, Matt Groening, for making their eyes so perfectly round. M&Ms for the eyes here, and the nose is, once again, a Good & Plenty, rolled in the face icing (ew.. "face icing").

I wanted to make the devil. I really wanted to. And I was all into it and excited until I realized I DIDN'T have Runts or that other candy shaped like tiny bananas that I used on the Monsters, Inc. cake pops that time... So I improvized and used Spree candies, but I had to bite into them to make the horn shape. Therefore I couldn't bring them into work in case someone ate the devil and I had to live with the fact that they ate my half-eaten candies. But I made it anyway, for myself, and here he is:

You can see my bite-marks on his horns. Nice.

Then I HAD to make Morbo, mostly because I have the vinyl figurine of him from those awesome mini figures by Kid Robot. I really want Slurms McGee but alas. I have not found him.

There he is, veins and all. I used purple sprinkles for his mouth because it was pretty late by the time I got around to Morbo and I didn't have purple icing. I went in the "vein" (haha) of Hypnotoad in my "cupcake elements" decoration technique. Morbo himself helped:

Hahahha. Ok. That's the last one! The gang's all here!

Actually, here are ALL of them:

And how I packaged them to bring to work:

I added 6 cupcakes with normal chocolate frosting on them so people wouldn't feel bad eating them (yes, that happens, and it's a really nice compliment!! but I'm also really happy when people eat them!) and so there'd be more than just 12!! Everyone loved them. I was walking on air today. Thanks, friends!! And goodbye & good luck, Joe & Allen!! :)

a cup-ple of kisses

2010-06-20T10:54:00.000-07:00

It began like this, how it usually begins:

My butter conundrum solved by my butter technique (the ziploc full of hot water sits on top of cut-up butter to soften it).. only this time there's also cream cheese.

Then there was the duty of stripping down the kisses:
Oh my! It's like they went for a mass-skinny dip! Where are all the little naked kisses?

Mmmm.. (I ate a few..) These didn't go into the mix--they went into the cups before the filling.

To be honest, I made these last month for Mother's Day, and I'd meant to post it here, but I was buried with school work.. so I don't remember what all the ingredients were, and I'm not sure where I put the Hershey's cookbook. So the next few will just be pictures. It looks delicious.

This:
became this:
And the butter and cream cheese were mixed with something else into this:
which became little balls of dough for the cups or tiny pie crusts. This part was especially fun because the dough was cool and squishy:

Just a few, which became:
a bunch, which I had to flatten into the mini-muffin tins:
Did I mention I love touching food?

Then I had to fill each cup with a kiss and some pecans (I think next time I'll omit the pecans--it was too crunchy for my taste):

Remember the chocolate-looking mixture from before? That gets poured into the cups:

I'm bad at cleanliness, sometimes. So my cupcake tins usually look like Jackson Pollocks before they go into the oven.

Voila!! They look really pretty.. and they tasted so good (if I do say so myself). My mom liked them too. Hope your Mother's Day was fun (a month ago)!!

tubcake?

2010-04-11T13:01:00.000-07:00

They're called cupcakes because they're like cups of cake, right? (I happen to think "cupcake" is one of the cutest words!) Well my friend Jeff bought me a colossal cupcake pan from Williams-Sonoma, and I decided to use it for my co-worker's birthday!

Gorgeous!! And here's the side view:

Like soft-serve ice cream (or frozen yogurt)!

What's really cute and unnecessary is that the entire pan is shaped like one giant cupcake:

Ok so I used a mix. But it was fun-fetti!

When it came out of the oven, I had to cut off the rounded tops of both pieces so they'd stay together! It reminded me of the original version of Cinderella when the stepsister cut off her heel to fit into the shoe... Don't think about that as you read the rest...

The directions actually asked me to put the whole thing in the fridge after I put icing in the middle to secure them as one:

Mmmm!!

Then I iced it, also with funfetti:

And just to show you how big it really is, I compared it with my hand:

Here's how it looked after we all ate half of it:

It was fun AND tasty! Can't beat that!

cupcakes for the pickies

2010-03-27T11:50:00.000-07:00

"I can't eat cupcakes because I'm vegan!" "I can't eat cupcakes because I can't eat gluten!" "I can't eat cupcakes because I'm so above the cute-tiny-cakes thing!"

Alright. I've never heard someone say that last thing. But for those of you who are vegan or can't eat gluten, BAM:

Oh, you can eat these.

This book is the book of NYC-based "babycakes," a bakery that creates and sells all sorts of delicious, vegan-friendly, allergy-free goodies. No, I have not been there. Yes, I know this is a crime.

I bought all the ingredients for vanilla cupcakes at Organica Natural Foods. It was pretty expensive, but I really wanted to try this recipe! I had to get all sorts of things I'd never used before (and some things I'd never heard of!): coconut oil, coconut flour, potato starch, agave nectar, arrowroot...

The coconut oil was solid and I had to heat it up to use it. I put the jar in a bowl of warm water but it took a VERY long time to melt. I finally ended up scooping it all out into a pot and heating it up on the stove (I only realized this was a good idea when I was working on the icing and the cupcakes were already in the oven).

Looks like ice cubes! It smelled really good. I wish I could post scents. If you don't like coconut, then nevermind. But I do.

Here's the dry mixture:
...and the wet:

It's close-up so you can see the lemon zest!

It was "my first zest," and it smelled soooo good. It made me want a lemon-drop martini!

I also got to use my brand-new, very cute measuring spoons that my dad got me from the Berkshires:

Shiny!

Here's the mix all combined, and in the oven:

Ding! They're done:

I tried following the recipe for the frosting--the only ingredient I didn't have was powdered soy milk. I had powdered regular milk instead. It stayed liquid no matter what I tried, so I just used storebought icing instead. Have you ever read the ingredients on a can of icing? I wouldn't suggest it.

I tried making the icing purple for the children's book Paulie Pastrami Achieves World Peace by James Proimos. We really like this book at the store--Paulie Pastrami bakes cupcakes and gives them to everyone... That, along with being a good listener and other nice things, helps create world peace. It's very sweet!

Sprinkles!

2010-03-15T17:07:00.001-07:00

This was one of my Christmas presents from my parents. Sprinkles cupcake mix (sold at Williams-Sonoma). It comes with a bag of mix, "modern dots," and instructions:

At this point I was like, "Modern dots? Are they edible? How can there be modern dots if there aren't old fashioned dots?" Well, I went to the Sprinkles bakery website... Apparently the modern dots are their thing. They're also very cute. They come in different shapes and letters and colors... I suggest visiting their site and poking around.

Anyway, the recipe called for softened butter, which I usually have trouble with. If I melt the butter, it's liquid and there's no turning back. If I take it straight out of the fridge (because I am incapable of planning ahead and leaving it out until it's softened), then it gets stuck in the beaters. So what's a girl to do?

I think I have to explain what this is. There's really no way to take a good picture of it. I filled a ziploc bag with warm water and sat it on top of the butter. Simple as that. AND...

It works!! It always does. Yes, I've done it before. If I become known for anything in the baking world, it will be my contribution to people who don't know how to manage their time and soften things.
Now it looks like scrambled eggs.

And now it's beautifully creamy! I added the mix:

Very crumbly! So I combine it with eggs and all that good stuff (I threw out the instructions so I don't remember exactly what it entailed, but it was as close to "from scratch" as you could get from a mix!)

Oooooh so pretty!

Forget cupcakes... where's the spoon?

This mix only makes 12 cupcakes. What I love about it is it's so thick. Notice how there's no splashes between the molds! I could scoop up some on the spatula and just slough it off into each mold. Yummmm....

While those were in the oven, I worked on the icing, which really was from scratch (the instructions for the cupcakes also had the recipe for the icing). It called for bittersweet chocolate.

Chocolate for baking!

It doesn't taste so good before it's used in something...

So I did the whole softening the butter thing again... And added vanilla (I think?) to get this:
Can I tell you... This was the BEST frosting I'd ever tasted.

Wow. You want this. Meanwhile, my highly technological tool helped me find out if my cupcakes were done:
Ha. The date was showing up cuz my new camera is touch-screen and my mom must have hit some button when she was taking a picture. So, there's the date!

And the cupcakes! They look like meatballs... (or delicious chocolate goodness)... They're all swirly on top, probably because I swirled them when I put the batter in the molds. Some of them even look like they're laughing...

Time to ice!! Here's the modern dots:

Like a little bullseye!

Conan O'Cupcake?

I'm trying to be like Magnolia's. The little dip around the middle, right?

Oooh!

Ta-da!! :)

Oh, and they were delicious. Go and buy this mix!! Now!!

disastercakes

2010-03-09T21:05:00.001-08:00

I was going to see my friend Katherine to watch a movie, and I thought, it would be nice to bring something, like cupcakes. But there would only be two of us and sooo many cupcakes! So I decided to make a smaller batch. Cupcakes for two!

I had the perfect book for it--Small Batch Baking. I bought it at my bookstore, all excited to have grabbed the last copy, as the book was listed as out of print!! This was my first time using this book, so I'm going to give it one more try before it hits the recycling bin! That said...

This is the small bowl I used :)

And another tiny bowl.

This is the book. I followed the directions, I swear! All except the "put them in cans" thing. The batter filled five muffin tins.

The PROBLEM was, the directions included adding ingredients that weren't listed! My first bowl of water, egg yolk and vanilla was never called for again. Also, after I prepared everything else, I was told to add "the buttermilk mixture," which wasn't listed as an ingredient! I flipped to the next recipe that included buttermilk to see how much I should put in. Just a few tablespoons! I even made my OWN buttermilk by putting cream of tartar into a glass of milk for 10 minutes.

I didn't know what to do with the egg yolk, water, vanilla thing, so I dumped it in with the rest, and scooped them into the muffin tin.

The batter tasted like normal chocolate cake batter... It even looked normal coming out of the oven.

But this is what happened:
Oh noooo! They didn't come out of the tins! I buttered the edges and bottoms, and everything. Needless to say, I was pretty frustrated. It didn't help that I tried to make the icing with butter, vanilla, and granulated sugar. I couldn't find our confectioners sugar, plus I was so distracted by the Great Cupcake Debacle that I wasn't thinking straight! I figured, why not see if it works? Well, it tasted like butter. Crunchy, sugary butter. So, the whole thing was a failure.

I blame it on the recipe.

That's why I'm not going ahead and telling you the author. It's bad enough her book is out of print! Now I know to read through the whole recipe before I begin!!

I'm posting this for those of you who have had a disaster recipe like this before. It happens alllll the time with baking and cooking! You're not alone. And it's nice to think I'm not, either :)

I did have great success a few days ago with another recipe :) But that's for later in the week!

easy there, pancake

2010-03-08T15:42:00.001-08:00

Kim got me these adorable pancake molds for my birthday from Williams Sonoma Kids.

I felt like making something for breakfast instead of eating my usual chocolate chip muffin from Shop Rite (but mmmmm!). Fortunately I've kept these in the kitchen (I know, where else should they go? but my stuff usually ends up in my room under a pile of clothing) and we also had a full box of Aunt Jemima's pancake mix, so I didn't even have to work hard for the prep!

Ohhhh they're so cute!! It helps that I went through a farm animal phase in middle school :) I cleaned the molds and oiled them up. I did the pig first:

This is the closest I'll get to real bacon... (I stopped eating pork a long time ago, but I still eat poultry, so I usually make turkey bacon when the craving hits!)

Almost burned it! I was pretty pleased as this was my first ever molded pancake :) Then I made the cow:

I had enough batter to make one of each (and then one more cow)!

I put blueberries in the cow I made for my mom. Blueberries also make great eyes:

Mmmmm I put bananas and maple syrup on mine! These were pretty filling, considering Aunt Jemima was supposed to make 10-12 pancakes and I could only get 4 out of it! Filling the molds required a lot of batter (I guess rougly 1/4 of it each).

I felt like Chef Mickey! (I love this magnet from Disney World's Character Breakfasts!!) I thought he deserved a little spotlight here. :)

You can have cupcakes for breakfast--they're just flat and without icing!!

cupcakes go to washington

2010-03-03T19:39:00.000-08:00

I recently took a trip to Washington, DC and made a point to go to Love Cafe on Valentine's Day!! I'd seen Warren Brown's show Cake Love on Food Network a few years back--apparently he used to be a lawyer but left the practice to open up his own bake shop! Way to go, Warren! Anyway, the bake shop is also called Cake Love and is located in DC. The baked goods are made there and sent across the street on a wheeled cart to Love Cafe (we witnessed this)!

It's not the best picture of the sign, but I took it from across the street, and I didn't really want to call attention to my being a tourist. It almost looks like a teacup!

Here's a picture of the Cake Love storefront:

Once inside, I didn't mind being touristy. I took a ton of pictures so I could share them with you!
There were many cupcakes, especially for Valentine's Day!
I got one of these:
It was hard to choose...
Not only cupcakes, but chocolate-covered (or, as they say in DC, "depped" ;)) strawberries!
I really liked this sign:
They explained underneath that fat is essential to cupcakes (oh well...) and substitutions would only add more chemicals, or something like that... Anyway, we all know that fat in moderation is NOT bad for you, in fact, we need fat! (If you couldn't tell, I'm currently taking an online course in nutrition! I have to fulfill a science undergrad credit for grad school, and it's really interesting, actually!)
This sign didn't come out as well because of the sun shining through the window, but it's still cute. Now we know what temperature to serve cake at!

Above is a picture of the counter--it has silverware embedded in it!
I love stickers... I only wish these were for sale instead of being put on the container already! (I also scrapbook so I pick up whatever scraps I can from places I like)

I buy based on cuteness! It was also tasty. I think it was strawberry-flavored icing!! And a sugar heart!

I also got a hot chocolate because it was SO COLD outside and we had a lot of walking to do!

Also, Warren Brown happens to have a new book out! It's called United Cakes of America! There's a recipe for each state--how cute! He also has a book before this appropriately titled Cake Love. Check them out!

P.S. have you checked out bakerella's site lately?? As usual it's full of adorable edible delights... this time she's been sponsored by Hyundai to make movie-award-season themed goodies!! I definitely suggest taking a looksie. I especially want to try my hand at those Mastering the Art of French Cooking cupcakes with the little lobsters on top! I love Julia Child!

easy there miss cupcake

2010-02-26T18:15:00.000-08:00

If you read my holiday post, you saw a bunch of cupcake-themed gifts I received :) One of them was a vinyl "miss cupcake" named "kabluey." I think it's really cute.

Well, my friend Jenny got me a DIY miss cupcake for my birthday! It's in one of the pictures from my last post. All white, begging to be painted. I was snowed in today, so I decided to paint! I wasn't sure what colors to use, and then when I decided that (pink and yellow) I wasn't sure which one to use as frosting and which to use as the wrapper! Fortunately, one of my Christmas gifts was this cute cupcake punch:

This was perfect for little cupcake templates! I punched out two of these little sets and colored them in (lightly because the colored pencils I used came from some kid book and weren't very... effective). This way I could see what placement I preferred as well as how to draw the little face!

Here (above) are all the little pieces. The packaging also suggested using the icing piece as a cloud! Here they are assembled:
The candle kind of looks like an afro pick :) I chose the one on the right to paint! But before I show you how that turned out, I just want to show you this other, smaller cupcake punch:

So cute!! I really should have put my hand in this picture to show you the actual size... I'd say the tiny one is about the size of my thumb.

I thought this looked nice :) the paper I punched from.

Well, here it is!
I just love it. I used acrylic paint and then a felt-tip pen for the face. Here he is with kabluey:
Hello, friend!
I highly encourage getting a DIY miss cupcake--it's so fun and the result is unavoidably cute.

Birthday Cake!

2010-02-21T19:00:00.001-08:00

It was my 26th birthday this past Friday! Which means I have pictures of CAKE!

Here is the official birthday cake made by my mom:
The heart-shaped double chocolate chip cake :) yum yum! We ended up putting the candles on the next day. See the poster on the left? My dad put a big picture of a cupcake on it and wrote, "Easy there cupcake, it's Elyse's Birthday!" (the posters are a big family birthday tradition :))
27 candles (the 27th for good luck)!

That night at the bar, my co-worker Mariann brought in this heart-shaped cookie cake she made for me:
Cuuute! And delicious!! Mariann is our resident baker at the store (she makes everything!--I mainly do cupcakes). I love the bow in its hair :)

And the last one is this adorable ice cream cloud cake from Ben & Jerry's that I ordered for having my friends over yesterday:

It was made of cake batter ice cream (which I didn't even know B&J made!) and had chocolate crunchies in the middle and the bottom:
My friends and family also got me a bunch of baking and cupcaking presents!!
On the left there's a set of farm animal pancake molds and a cupcake candle from Kim :) The white cupcake in the front is a paint-your-own cupcake by Olive 47 (like the blueberry one I got for Christmas, only I can design it myself!)

Jeena got me a cupcake wine glass (ooh 2 things I love in one):
Antoinette and her family gave me this fuzzy cupcake card with my presents and Jeff got me square silicone cupcake molds and this wobbly cow timer!
Jeff also got me this giant cupcake mold!!Wow! Some of these things are going to get their own posts pretty soon! Of course my friends got me a lot of other things I just LOVE but this is a cupcake blog! So I'm just showing you the baking stuff :) Thank you, my good friends, for thinking of me and supporting my cupcake habit!!!

Cupsatawny Cakes

2010-02-02T15:44:00.000-08:00

Happy Groundhog Day!! I heard Punxatawny Phil saw his shadow, which means 6 more weeks of winter! I read today that it has to do with Europeans who settled in Philadelphia and their custom of watching animals come out of hibernation... but I don't know how the seeing its shadow thing makes sense... Anyway, I thought I'd celebrate by making these groundhog cupcakes!!

I started with some chocolate munchkins from Dunkin Donuts, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary (I saw the cups and one of the little logos is Mister Donut--David recently told me that DD used to consist of DD and Mister Donut, but all the MDs changed to just DDs, and MD is now the DD of Japan!) I went to a Mister Donut when I visited David in Japan and they had the most wonderful macarons...

Anyway, I made my usual stop at Fuzziwig's for inspiration. My best find was "popsicle tarts," twin popsicles in tiny candy form! They came in blue (raspberry), yellow (banana! mmm), and white (coconut). The white ones were perfect for groundhoggy buck teeth.

I also got chocolate-covered sunflower seeds (for eyes and noses) and a tube of M&M minis (for ears). Teddy Grahams were also a big part!

I made a batch of chocolate cupcakes and a batch of tiny ones too:

and iced them with white fluffy frosting. I started decorating the small ones by rolling the edges in green sugar:

Then I took the top off a normal-sized cupcake to use the moist inside as dirt. I put that in the middle and stuck a teddy graham in:

I used a toothpick to dot 2 little teeth on his mouth :)

I then did the same thing to the normal-sized ones, but I used the munchkins as groundhogs instead!

The teeth work so well! The thing is, the flavor of the popsicle candy itself is kind of not great... but I told people to take them out before eating the munchkin anyway to avoid a choking situation... It's difficult to stick all the sunflower seeds and m&ms in there without the munchkin crumbling! The fresher the better. It also helps to have a little carton of 30 munchkins when you only need about 5!!

Haha. It's kind of like a Caddyshack cupcake, too.

As usual, I got tired of decorating so I made some "filler" cupcakes: to represent the grassy field the groundhogs are popping out of as they come out of hibernation, I rolled the entire tops of the iced cupcakes in green sugar. Hooray for shortcuts!

Hope your groundhog did not see his shadow! Have fun waking up to "I Got You, Babe" every morning until you figure out the secret to a happy life!

david & hiro's wedding

2010-01-14T20:38:00.000-08:00

My brother, David, got married to his boyfriend, Hiroyuki, on December 28 in Lenox, Massachusetts!! They asked me to be their justice of the peace, so I officiated their wedding! I was flattered and the wedding was amazing and perfect and so beautiful! I did a bunch of crafty stuff for it, too, so I have an excuse to blog about it ;) For instance, I made their cake topper (above) out of two wooden "boys" (the package said "boys" but they were really just wooden pegs), tiny plastic hats (that I just so happened to have laying around the house from, I guess, some other project I had meant to do), and the top of a cardboard heart-shaped box that I painted white. I painted the suits 2 days before the wedding when they were out of the house, by which time I knew what color their tuxes would be.

The bow wasn't actually attached to the topper, I just put it there for effect. I did attach it to each wedding favor, though (above)! I got them from this wonderful etsy site, Little Spark Creations. It was a small wedding (22 people in all) and I couldn't find a site that would custom-print ribbons without buying 50 or more! Little Spark Creations offered custom ribbons at a 25 count for only $10! What a deal! Not only that--they came out exactly how I wanted, and I was able to tie them into the most perfect little bows for the wedding favors!

Here is where the edible stuff comes in...

A tiny chocolate cake!!! Made from melting chocolate wafers :) Does it get any cuter than this? Everything I needed came in this kit at AC Moore. This big box included 25 fold-up boxes and lids, 3 or 4 bags of chocolate wafers, 25 blank tags (which I ended up not using), and a mold for the tiny cakes :)

My 11-year-old cousin Jack thought it was delicious :)

Here is the cake!!

The happy family:
A candid moment:Bro and sis:

Yay! A perfect day for love.

christmas cookies and cupcakes!

2010-01-09T09:05:00.000-08:00

I have an extensive, if not quaint, collection of cookie cutters, and last year I made octopi, lobsters, princes and princesses and the usual Christmas shapes. I got the beach, fantasy and Christmas cutters at Williams-Sonoma. My brother got the fantasy ones for me last Christmas! They came in a box shaped like a big storybook with a locket--sooo cute!

This year I left out the beach theme and decorated with red, green, white and yellow sprinkles, which were the only colors I had anyway, which was perfect! Check out disco-Santa!

I liked the horse :)
Then, I guess my cupcake reputation is spreading, because I got a bunch of cupcake-themed gifts for Christmas!!

I got the adorable, elegant cupcake stand AND sprinkles and icing! My parents got me the cupcake paper punches (how CUTE!), the Sprinkles cupcake mixes (as opposed to cake mix!), the clasped cupcake ornament and the vinyl blueberry cupcake figure. Adorable!!

Wow. Just so cute. You can get to designer olive47's page here! Tons of other cute things are on her page, including the panda project, where you can e-mail her for panda stickers to make people more aware of the dwindling panda population... If you love pandas, I suggest you also check out my September post of panda cupcakes from the book Hello, Cupcake!

One last thing, we had a cookie cake after Christmas dinner:
which had a very cute Santa decoration:
Ho Ho Ho! I hope you all had happy holidays! :)

Fantastic Mr. Cupcake

2009-12-20T16:04:00.000-08:00

I know I just made cupcakes 2 days ago. They were from scratch. I knew I wanted to make Fantastic Mr. Fox cupcakes as soon as I saw the movie directed by Wes Anderson (and I loved reading Roald Dahl's book when I was in 4th grade), but I wasn't sure when I'd have the time! So since it was a snowy day and nothing was going on, I decided to make them today.

These were not from scratch. These were made from a mix. As usual, I got the candy decorations from Fuzziwigs:
I also had 2 bags of marshmallows--one large, one small. I cut a large marshmallow in half, then again to make a flat semi-circle for the snout (inspired by Hello, Cupcake's wolf cupcake):
and some heart-shaped peach gummies cut in half for the ears:
Then I used a zip-lock bag (also a Hello, Cupcake staple) as an icing bag and put white and orange squiggles on it:
Then I added a Jelly Belly jellybean for the nose and 2 green M&M's for the eyes with white icing under them (for the white eye area):
Then I put some chocolate icing for the pupils, mouth and ears:

Then I made Ash, the son who wears a towel or blanket as a cape, so I used a small marshmallow cut in half and dipped in frosting to be the knot around the neck:
Then Possum, who had target-looking eyes when he zoned out and a big pink nose (a cut-up Starburst):
Kind of just looks like a mouse, but.. whatever. I like his eyes :)

Then I made Mrs. Fox, who has purple eyes and eyeliner:

I just had to make the wolf... Throughout the movie, Mr. Fox and Possum talk about wolves and how they're afraid of them (well, Mr. Fox just has a phobia, he's "not afraid") and there's this scene where they see one at the end... and it's one of my favorite scenes:
Then I thought I'd do the writing thing like I did for the Wild Things cupcakes, and wrote on them:

Yay! That was fun! The movie was so great, mostly because of the detailed stop-animation, so go see it! Hope you enjoyed!

Twilight Red Velvet Cupcakes!

2009-12-19T16:37:00.000-08:00

It was my co-worker's daughter's 10th birthday celebration yesterday and I know she and her sister love red velvet cupcakes. I was also feeling inspired by Magnolia's Rockette cupcakes, so I decided to make some... from scratch! I used Martha Stewart's Cupcakes book.

I was curious about what was actually in red velvet to make it so red! Turns out it's mostly just red food coloring:
Yuck.. looks like blood. Good thing these are Twilight-themed! This is the sugar, oil, eggs, food coloring and vanilla. The other bowl has the cocoa powder, cake flour and salt.

Then you're supposed to combine the 2 while intermittently adding buttermilk. I didn't add the buttermilk.
Ew. So far, so gross! It looks like bacon in some sludgy form. So, be sure to remember the buttermilk.
There. I added the buttermilk. Now it looks more brown than red, though! So I dashed in a lot more food coloring.

In Martha's book it says it's called red velvet mostly because of the reaction the vinegar has with the cocoa powder. Yes, there is vinegar in red velvet cake. Who comes up with this stuff? I felt like I was making a science fair volcano because I had to mix the vinegar and baking soda in a small bowl before adding it to the mixture. Fizzzzzzz.................

It wasn't much of a volcanic reaction, otherwise I'd've taken a picture or videotaped it and shared. It was actually kind of a let-down. Maybe I should make a volcano anyway, since I have red food coloring and all that.

I have this method of putting the batter in the cupcake tins. I get a big spoon-ful of the mix and pour it in each cup, letting it fly all over the rest of the tin, because this is not a clean way of going about it. It looks like a Jackson Pollock painting. I call it "Batter Splatter":
It also looks violent.. This red food coloring is pretty creepy, actually. They came out of the oven beautifully, though!

I even make 5 mini ones with the leftover batter. How cute! They look like macarons.

Then it was time to make the cream cheese icing. Okay, Martha, whaddaya got?

FOUR cups of sifted confectioners' sugar. This is no easy task when your sifter is on its very last legs. Our sifter's spring is just about to pop out, so to use it you have to pull it back, then stop and push it back in. Each time. This was a labor of love. Four cups of love, to be exact.

Two sticks of unsalted butter, and 12 ounces of cream cheese, room temperature. It's good to read ahead; I did not. Straight from the fridge, butter and cream cheese are preeeeetty difficult to mix together. After waiting for what seemed like long enough and it still wouldn't work, I filled a zip-loc bag full of warm water and let it sit on top of the ingredients in the bowl. After a few minutes it was ready! So that is my tip for you, if you end up not reading ahead, like me.

Then add the sugar...
Mmmmmmmmmm!

Yeaaaahhh!! I barely had time to ice all 24 before I ran off to class, and I was a few minutes late! I tried to ice them like Magnolia's... The one on the left looks kind of close! :)

After class I made the decorations. I printed out a bunch of pictures of the characters from Twilight and New Moon, as well as some "Team Jacob" and "Team Edward"...
I bought this big paper-punch that makes the shape of scalloped circles--they're just so pretty, right? I was excited. I'd seen these kinds of things being sold on etsy, but I figured I could make them, too.

The girls just LOVED it, calling, "I'm Team Jacob!!" and "I want Team Edward!!" The little boy there even said, "Team Apple!" because of the Twilight book cover art. Awww. So I got to find out how red velvet is made, AND I made some 10 year olds happy! :)

Magnolia for the Holidays

2009-12-05T17:08:00.000-08:00

My friends and I went to see the Tim Burton exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art yesterday and, since we were in the area, we saw the tree at Rockefeller Center and got cupcakes from Magnolia. Here's the tree:

and this time I took more pictures of Magnolia Bakery:

above, pretty signage; below, mixers at the window!

Magnolia has more than cupcakes! Apple crisps, lemon cake, pecan and pumpkin pie!

They had some nice hanging decorations for the holidays (above). They usually sell adorable aprons, and they also have a cute holiday apron (below)!
Oh! Time to order cupcakes!
Remember in my first post about Magnolia when I said I thought their red velvet cupcakes were called Rockette Red Velvet Cupcakes? And then they weren't? Well they are again! I guess it's just a holiday thing. Anyway, I bought 2, and they are ADORABLE:
The chocolates are Rockette toy soldiers!!

The inside was just as red as a Coca Cola truck:

Here is a picture of the real Rockettes presenting the cupcakes (thanks Kim)!

The cupcakes were delicious, as usual. We also bought a pumpkin cupcake and a gingerbread cupcake... the pumpkin had great frosting, and the gingerbread was amazing altogether.

I have another cupcake project in the works--bought the candy for it and everything! Now I just need the time! Hopefully it'll be my next post!

Happy Holidays!

Thanksgiving!

2009-11-29T17:32:00.000-08:00

The night before Thanksgiving, my mom & I went to see the Macy's parade balloons being inflated:
Here's one us bakers can really appreciate, and he was new to the parade this year!

I had to make it look like I was poking him (hmm-hmm!):

Spiderman makes his return:
and I had to include Buzz because of my earlier Pixar posts:

Some guy working there was wearing his jumpsuit so I took a picture of this:Afterwards, we stopped at this adorable little bakery, Alice's Tea Cup:
where they had this great chocolate buttercream cake which was as delicious as it was cute:

Mmmmmm... The next morning we woke up and watched all the balloons take flight in the parade. I got some chocolate turkeys:

The large one does not seem amused...

We had a great big dinner and five different desserts:

...but I only made one: pecan pie.

Ok it looks burnt, but it wasn't. I used the recipe on the back of the Karo corn syrup bottle (a family tradition). It was a hit. :)

That night, I made bakerella's pumpkin pie bites for the potluck at work the next day. The recipe calls for a pumpkin-shaped cookie cutter for the rolled-out pie crust, but I used a round glass instead:
I arranged them into the small-muffin tin and they look just like tiny pies! How adorable:

I mixed together the ingredients (including pumpkin, pumpkin spice, cream cheese, vanilla & eggs) and filled them into the tiny crusts. The recipe suggests the baking time as 12-15 minutes at 350, but these took half an hour for some reason. It was a late night, but they came out perfectly!!

I wish you could taste them. Or at least smell them! They were delicious. I had NONE left after work. They were a hit. Now I know what tobring to future get-togethers!!

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

other halloween treats

2009-11-03T17:42:00.000-08:00

So I had all these naked cupcakes left over after I decorated the Wild Things (about a dozen). So I made another redhead monster (above) and another pair of Wild Thing claws as well as Werewolf claws (chocolate icing), and 2 monsters looking at each other in the dark (my "read-into-it" cupcake):

I also made some spiders, a bat, a skull and an owl:

all made with Skittles (eyes and bodies of bugs), chocolate melting wafers and chocolate icing from the snipped Ziploc. Oh, and some more tiny little banana candies for the owl's horns & beak! I love Halloween...

where the wild things are... cupcakes!

2009-11-01T07:20:00.000-08:00

So I was Max from Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak this Halloween. We'd had all these promotional displays at work (movies based on books are a big deal for bookstores), and I saw the movie a few weekends ago. So with all this ado about it, and the cute hat Max wears, how could I not be him for Halloween?

Also, when I was making the Monsters, Inc. cake pops last month, I got a bunch of ideas for Where the Wild Things Are-themed baked goods. So I thought, why not make cupcakes to match my costume?? And share the wealth with my co-workers?

I started out with a batch of devil's food cupcakes (how appropriate!) and whipped vanilla frosting. I got all the decorating candies at Fuzziwigs. The sprinkles were all Wilton. I also bought more melting chocolates (the ones I had were peppermint--I wanted to use white chocolate).

I thought I'd try making a monster first (rather than Max) since I was so excited... Here's the decorating ideas I laid out on wax paper:

Ha! Things are lookin' good. The eyes are yellow Spree candies, the noses are heart-shaped hard candies. The horns, beak and head-feathers are all gummy fruit wedges. The red hair is sour tape and the black hair is licorice (which I ended up not using because it had hardened and was difficult to cut, plus it was hard to chew and didn't taste too good anyway). Oh and the blue nostrils on the bull-looking face are chocolate-covered sunflower seeds!

I decided to make the bird-monster first. He seemed to have the simplest structure: beak, feathers, eye. I put white nonpareil sprinkles on the bottom half to look like the small feather pattern. Then I stuck on the fruit wedges and the Spree eye:

Of course there's a bottom part to the beak and many more feathers that could go in there, but I didn't have any extra fruit wedges to spare. Plus the oven was on and it happened to be a warm Halloween, so the pieces began to slide off. He spent the rest of the decorating time in the fridge!

I then separated some of the vanilla frosting into a bowl and put one drop of red food coloring and one drop of yellow to make a peach skin tone. (I had taken notes on Maurice's artwork from his book during my break at work so I'd know what colors and shapes to use!) It looks kind of like the "anything muppets" Jim Henson had--the kind you add things to to give it a personality:

Look it has a mouth! I didn't mean to do that! I decided to make this one the redhead (being one myself):

Aww... The teeth are white chocolate melts cut into small triangles, and the mouth was that old trick of putting icing in a Ziploc, pushing it to the corner, and snipping a tiny hole (if you don't have a fancy pastry bag!).

I made Max next by icing a cupcake with white, then the skin-tone over it on the middle-to-bottom part. I rimmed the white edges in white sparkling sugar. My original plan was to melt some of the white chocolate and pipe it out in triangle shapes for the ears. Well, I put them in a Ziploc bag in a bowl and microwaved them. The directions said to knead in between microwaving, but I found out too late that the chocolate had melted through the bag! Melted chocolate got all over my hand--ow! So I suggest microwaving in 10-second intervals instead of 30!

That incident kind of killed the dream of shaping melted chocolate into whatever I desired, so I went with the simpler approach of cutting the melting wafers into triangle shapes (duh) and stuck those in. I then used the chocolate icing to draw his face. My first attempt looked like Doug Funnie in a Max costume:

Then I realized he looked too nice and I went for the true Max face:

I am SO proud of this one! I hope it would make Maurice proud, too. The chocolate icing really behaved as it came out of the bag, and the sugar really looks like fuzz!

I used the redhead face template again to make the "main character" monster (I've always seen him as the main character even though that nice bull-like one is on the cover). You know, the one with the striped shirt (body). I used that amazing European chocolate bar, Flake, as the hair and beard. I broke it up into small pieces and spread them around the head. Then I piped some more chocolate icing around it:

The horns are also the melting wafers, just cut in half.

Then I made my personal favorite, the bull-like one. This one gets to be blue! I put a drop of blue food coloring in a Dixie cup full of icing and put that on the cupcake. I added the eyes, fruit wedges (horns and ears), sunflower seeds (nostrils), icing mouth and melting wafer teeth (cut into square shapes). I almost forgot about the blue sprinkles I had picked up the day before!! I think that was the finishing touch that made this one come out so nicely. The one in the book has a mound of fluff or fur on top of his head which the glitter mimicked pretty well:

The plate even looks like the plants from Where the Wild Things Are!

So here they all are together:

And on a plate:

Yay!!

With the leftover cupcakes and what remained of the decorations (not much), I made some blue claw cupcakes and some title cupcakes:

The claws are--you guessed it!--white chocolate melting wafers cut in half! I'm so glad I bought those.

I made these to bring into work with my costume on, so here they all are in the amazing Cupcake Courier:

A few close-ups!!

This one has some significance if you've seen the movie:

And of course here's me in my costume holding my darlings:

Here I am with my costumed co-workers/friends:
Colonel Mustard, his girlfriend The Maid (both from Clue), Billy Mays in front of them, Paper Bag Princess (from the Robert Munsch book of the same name), a Pirate, Peter Pan, and me, Max!

Here is one of the cupcakes with his stuffed animal counterpart:

Here's one last picture taken at work with the artwork we usually have above the hardcover picture books:

They were then left in the break room where the REAL wild things are ;) Happy Halloween!

I Cupcake NY

2009-10-25T20:12:00.000-07:00

I plan on having some homemade stuff up next week since it's going to be Halloween and all, but since I haven't posted anything in about a month (last days of a grad class, then I got a week-long cold), I figured I'd at least show you some adorable cupcakes from NYC. I'm sure you've heard of Magnolia Bakery...

There are a few locations in the city, but the one I went to today was the one at Rockefeller Center. It was too busy for me to loll around and take pictures, plus I wouldn't've had any good shots since there were people everywhere. I did take pictures of the goods, however. I got 2 red velvet cupcakes, which I think last year they were calling Rockette cupcakes because of the red outfits they wear during the Christmas Spectacular, but I didn't see that anywhere today or on their website...

It looks like a snowball!

The side of the box cut it a little after I took one out, but it makes for a better picture!

Mmmmmm.... The icing is vanilla--I'm used to cream cheese on my red velvets! It was good anyway, of course. I also brought 2 home for my parents:

These look even better! I especially love the little sugar daisy. It looks like a barrette.

Last time I went to Magnolia (last winter) I noticed their T-shirts but I didn't buy one. I bought one today:
It came wrapped in a brown bow (I also took a business card).

Awww, I do cupcake New York.
Of course the logo is on the back. Well. It's good to know there's also a whole world of cupcake couture out there. Hooray Magnolia!

Monsters, Inc. cake pops!

2009-09-28T20:30:00.001-07:00

I didn't have enough of these made the other day to put pictures up, but here they are as promised! Ever since my co-worker told me about Bakerella's adorable cake pops, I have been dying to make some myself. I was also imagining how I would decorate them to fit with my Pixar theme (see my previous post for the Pixar cupcakes and costumes :))

The first idea I had was to put mini chocolate chips on a green cake pop and call it Mike Wazowsky. So I bought green, blue, white and chocolate melting wafers at A.C. Moore. The green & blue ones were the perfect shades--it's like they knew I was coming! I made the cake the night before, and the next day I had to crumble up the cake (with my fingers because I don't have a food processor as you might remember from the Oreo crushing incident) to add the icing and form it into balls:

I melted some chocolate wafers in a mug and dipped the lollipop sticks in them to act as a glue when I stuck them into the cake (as Bakerella suggests). I think it made them look pretty professional! Then I kept them in the freezer while I melted some green wafers. I took a few out and positioned them in the styrofoam ring I bought (again, Bakerella's clever recommendation) so they would dry standing up! I spooned the green coating on and added the mini chocolate chips:

You don't know how PLEASED I was when I did this. It came out EXACTLY how I pictured it. That practically never happens! So I went on to make the Sullys:

Those aren't Runts, they're "tangy bananas" from Fuzziwig's (I was hoping banana Runts came in their own separate spot so I could shovel those into my candy bag, but I was getting tired of trying to manipulate the scoop to JUST get the bananas). They're actually smaller than banana Runts and worked a lot better for these pops! (I think these would also work nicely for a "Where the Wild Things Are" theme, which, you know, I just might do next)

I served Mike and Sully like that for my friends, but I had SO MANY left over that I decided to make Boo tonight. I'd had the idea before, but I had NO time to get them together before my friends arrived. So I did it tonight! My idea was: dip some candy corn pieces in chocolate:

then half-dip the pops in white melting wafers (which I thought would be vanilla, but I bought peppermint without realizing it, and then I thought, I should have bought pink or some peachy color since it's supposed to be Boo's face):

then dip the top halves in chocolate and quickly push the candy corn pieces into the sides:
Aaaaah cute! I did the faces with a toothpick dipped in the melted chocolate. Since I put a face on Boo, I decided to try that with Mike and Sully, too:

Well, Sully looks weird. I think I like him better as "conceptual Sully" like in the pictures up top. Anyway I put a bow on Boo since I couldn't think of any other way to make her not look like a ghost with pigtails, or Mickey Mouse:

So here they are together:
and since I had him out, here is Mike with Mike:
and of course here I am with them:
(I always forget to fix my glasses before getting my picture taken! I really have to fix that tilt..)
Anyway. Hope you like these, and you can get the recipe, how-to and tips at www.bakerella.com, along with about a zillion other adorable recipes and photos!! (and here's some more of mine because I took so many pictures I just want to share them all)

Boo and her monster:
"Conceptual" version:
The gang's all here:

A Mickey "Vinylmation" figure I got a few weeks ago at the 5th Ave Disney Store that reminded me of what I just did:

Pixar movie cupcakes

2009-09-27T19:08:00.000-07:00

I am a big fan of themes, as any of my friends can tell you. I just had a few friends over to celebrate the Disney/Pixar movies. FUN! I baked cupcakes the night before. Then I sat down and decorated.

I'd had the decorations in mind for a while. It started when I went to the Lego store and picked out a bunch of loose pieces in the back (like a candy store). I got tires, fences, seaweed, ivy leaves, flowers, trees, clocks, and bricks with eyes. Then I went to a candy store called Fuzziwig's to get all the random edible pieces I'd need, like gummy clown fish (perfect!), gummy army men, gummy butterflies, "tangy bananas" (smaller versions of banana Runts), etc.

I put a gummy fish on one cupcake with a Lego seaweed piece behind it, and sprinkled on some candy pieces to make a "Finding Nemo" cupcake:

The candy pieces are supposed to look like fishbowl gravel or rocks on the sea floor. If I'd had more time I would have dyed the icing blue! I didn't even have blue sprinkles! The "Toy Story" army man cupcake was pretty easy--just green sprinkles and a gummy army man. Fortunately they have some that are in the crawling-on-the-ground pose, which made it look pretty cute (if battle-ready figures can be cute):

The one I did from "A Bug's Life" is the same, just a different gummy. I've never seen gummy butterflies. I didn't know gummies could be so versatile! Then I took the Lego tires and a fence and put a blue melting wafer on top of the wheels to be a car (obviously from "Cars"), which I thought turned out so cute!

I also got a bag of yellow & white plastic robot figurines on clearance at the Disney Store to use for "Wall-E" cupcakes:

If you want to make these for little kiddles, make sure not to use Legos. My friends and I are all old enough now to recognize plastic from candy (I hope)--otherwise it's a choking hazard!

Here I am cooking ratatouille in my Jessie hat (Julia Child's recipe! How exciting!) to honor the movie "Ratatouille." I also offered themed drinks like Salty Dog (grapefruit juice & vodka with pineapple juice and salt on the rim) to reference Doug from "Up," Frozone Margarita (a blue frozen margarita rimmed with lime juice and salt) of course for Frozone from "The Incredibles," (and here's a picture of me with him from last April),

Wormy Appletini (evidently I spent a lot of time thinking about this one) which is just an appletini with a sour gummy worm inside to celebrate "A Bug's Life," and Blue Lagoon (vodka, blue curacao and lemonade, with a Swedish fish on the bottom, of course) for "Finding Nemo."

Harvey Wall-E Bangers and Sidecars were also considerations but the ones I did serve had similar ingredients and I didn't want to go too overboard! I also made some cake pops to look like Sully and Mike Wazowsky from "Monsters, Inc.," but I want to make a few more so I can get some more good pictures to post up here! It's what I'm most excited to show you, so check back soon!

p.s. here's our costumes:

Mike as Charles F. Muntz (the villain from "Up")

Kim as Young Ellie from "Up" and Jeff as Linguini from "Ratatouille" (notice little Remy sitting on his shoulder that Kim bought for him, and Kim's soda bottle caps on her collar!)

Sweet Serendipity

2009-09-23T18:07:00.000-07:00

Tonight I made Serendipity 3's famous Frrrozen Hot Chocolate from their cookbook, Sweet Serendipity. What does this have to do with cupcakes? Bear with me.

Frrrozen Hot Chocolate is a delicious blend of ice, chocolate & milk. It's the most popular request at Serendipity 3 in Manhattan.

I've been to Serendipity 3 with my mom a few times and decided to make some FHCs for her birthday! You get to pick what kind of chocolate you want to use (I used Dove). You melt about a bar in a double boiler:
which is a pot of chocolate over a pot of boiling water (you can turn the heat off once the water boils). Stir the chocolate around till it melts. Take it off the boiler, then add some hot chocolate mix and sugar:
Mmm but don't eat it yet! Mix it with milk, then put it in the blender with a bunch of ice. WHRRRRRRRR add whipped cream and this is what you get:

You can get the actual, more specific recipe from the cookbook! Now, what about the cupcakes? Serendipity 3 happens to have a very cute, very kitschy souvenir shop at the entrance that you can coo over while you wait for your table (and you will have to wait). There's always a ton of stuff I want to get, and I finally bought an adorable pair of earrings that I always get comments on:
Tiny cupcakes! With little gem sprinkles! These also come in different colors and they have necklaces, too! I also liked the little pink Cinderella-like coach necklace, but that's for my next trip!

Where the cupcakes at?

2009-09-22T17:44:00.000-07:00

When you love cupcakes, you want to know where to find them. If you live in or are going on a trip to Seattle, WA, Cupcake Royale is the place to go. In fact, as I just found out while searching for what link to use, they have a blog! Now, you'd think they'd be in various guidebooks and just generally be known as a sort of mecca for cupcake monsters, but I only found the place because I wanted to go to Archie McPhee! It was a rainy day (oh, Seattle!) and my friend & I had taken a bus or 2 just to get there and I thought we might as well look for someplace else to make the most out of our trip. And lo, there appeared a banner in the sky...

Cupcakes?! I'm so there! So we walked in, and there was a LINE all the way to the DOOR and I thought, howcome no one TOLD me about this place? I felt awkward being the annoying tourist with the camera, so I didn't get a fantastic shot of the displays, but here's a pretty good shot of what I ate:
Yummmm!! And unlike some other boutiqueish cupcake shops, these cupcakes taste as good as they look! I also bought a very cute pink sticker you can see in the picture as well as my fancy schmancy hot chocolate. On the way out (I was very reluctant to leave), there was another cute surprise:

GIANT CUPCAKE! So, if you find yourself in Seattle, head on over to Ballard (or their new store on Capitol Hill) for Cupcake Royale, home of Seattle's Best Cupcakes.

pandas on parade!

2009-09-21T18:38:00.000-07:00

Ooooh look at them all together! I got to work about 10 minutes early to set this up and I was STILL 2 minutes late clocking in! I wish I had something fancier than paper towel to put them on. But there they are, and everybody loved them!! Hooray!

So, on the topic of Oreos, I thought I'd share what I made last Halloween (one of my favorite holidays). I used the foot-stomping method for making the Oreo crumbs and dipped the whole iced top of each cupcake in to make DIRT:

I used chocolate icing and chocolate cake, and some plastic bones ("table sprinkles" from Party City). Though gruesome (no one wants to find a bone in their cupcake), I loved these. The chocolate frosting/Oreo crumbs combo was delicious! Talk about an easy cupcake!

Cupcakes are the new black.

2009-09-20T18:41:00.000-07:00

Is it me or are cupcakes SUPER popular right now? My friend Caitlin bought me Hello, Cupcake! for Christmas last year. I also got the new Martha Stewart cupcake book and Hey There, Cupcake! last year... My co-workers kept bringing in cute cupcakes and decorated cakes for the break room, and after my friend/co-worker Sam told me about Bakerella.com, I was just so inspired. The cuteness of it all is too much to take, so I decided to blog about my own creations and attempts at others'. I'd like to post some things I've made in the past, but for now I'll start with my FIRST attempt at this Hello, Cupcake! book.

The panda cupcake.

First you get some cupcakes (I used a mix). Then you have to cut a bunch of Oreos (or generic-named cookie sandwiches) in half to use as the arms and legs. Oreos are HARD TO CUT! So this wasn't so much fun as frustrating. I tried microwaving them (the filling melts if it's in too long, otherwise, it doesn't do much). The cookies tend to crack of their own volition. What I ended up doing was twisting them open, cutting each cookie in half, then smushing the tops & bottoms back together again. Ai yai yai. Meanwhile,

Oh, my cupcakes are done! You have to make regular- and mini-sized ones. Aren't they cute? I just bought the mini-muffin tin yesterday at Party City for about $6.99. Nice! Well then you set about icing them all fancily.

First you put some vanilla frosting on a mini-marshmallow. It's like edible glue. You stick these onto the mini cupcakes.
Then you frost over it (which I thought would be hard and the marshmallow would fall off, but it was surprisingly cooperative!) and add all the whistles and bells (black icing through a snipped corner of a ziplock bag, mini chocolate chips, chocolate-covered sunflower seeds, chocolate cereal O's--the recipe called for Oreo O's but the closest I could find was some Keebler cookie cereal).

Ooooh cute! Then you use a food processor to cut up the Oreos but I have an easier method for those of you without food processors, passed down from my mom:

This also helps with the frustration. So you frost the bigger cupcakes and dip them into the bowl of now-crushed Oreos. Then you get this:
Then you simply put it all together. But this is what your kitchen table looks like before the easy part:

Aaaaaaaaaaah! Anyway. This is the BEST part:
I added the umbrella as a little flourish. It doesn't look as great as the ones in the book, but I think it's pretty darn cute.
Seriously it took me all day. I took a zillion pictures of it. I don't even want to eat the little guy!

I'm bringing them into work tomorrow in my Cupcake Courier, and I used each tray to hold a separate part:
I'll have to come in a few minutes earlier just to set them all up! I'll be sure to post what they look like all together ;)

I'm going to bed.