easy there, pancake

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

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

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!

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

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!