Fruit Pizza

I made this for playgroup. Here's the recipe:

Crust:
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 & 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup butter
Mix together and pack onto a 16" pizza pan. Heat oven to 350 and cook 12-15 minutes.

1st layer:
8 oz cream cheese (softened)
1/2 cup sugar (I used powdered)
1 tsp. vanilla
Mix and spread on cooled crust.

2nd layer:
Add fruit of your choice. The more color the prettier.

Top layer:
1 cup pineapple juice
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 Tbsp. corn starch (I stir mine in a little of the pineapple juice so it's not lumpy)
1/2 cup sugar
Cook in small saucepan on med high heat until it is thick and clear. Cool and spread over fruit. *Sometimes it is too thick to spread so it ends up going on in clumps (like in picture) but it still tastes yummy.
Place pizza in fridge to cool and then serve.

Hungry Caterpillar

I made this for a friend. Her sweet little boy turned one and she did this for the theme. How cute is she! I was glad I kept the leaf from the last one I did. I used regular sized cupcakes this time so he barely fit but I was glad to reuse this leaf.

Happy Birthday Brigham!

What not to do!

Looking back at these pics I can laugh but when it happened I wanted to cry. Mary and I spent so much time making these. I like to store my cupcakes/treats in the oven when I'm done especially if they can't be covered. I usually put a sign on the on/off button to remind me that somethings in there but today was a little crazy and I didn't even think of it.

So an hour and a half before I needed to have these puppies at the church I turned on my oven to preheat it so I could cook the spinach artichoke dip I had just made. 10 minutes later my friend said what is that smoke from. This is where I let out my favorite swear word and then wanted to cry. I was glad I had friends over to get me through it calmly. And I was thankful to Mary for bringing one pan to the church.

Here is what the cupcakes looked like before they got melted. Thanks Mary for saving these.
*Looking back I am grateful for the humility lesson and in remembering what is really important in life. It's not the end of the world to ruin a few cupcakes or to have to go buy some from the bakery.

More Spring Cupcakes

My friend Mary and I did these for our Relief Society Birthday party. I had so much fun doing these with her. She is such a good friend.

I forgot my camera so I took these with my phone. They are a little dark but hopefully you get the idea. We did strawberry and vanilla cake with lemon cream cheese frosting.

In the middle of decorating these Mary left to go to the church to set up. I told her I would just bring the ones we finished along with the others. She said she might as well take them now. I'm so glad she did because I did a very dumb thing and ruined all the others. I will post pictures and explain later.

Orange and Pink Polka-dots!

I absolutely love these colors together. My friend Mindy and I made these for her daughters 2nd birthday. She did the cutest theme- polka-dots. I want to copy her and do this for one of Lucy's birthdays. All of her food was round: donut holes, sandwiches that she cut out with a circle cookie cutter, fruit that she melon balled, little jars full of round candies, and Ritz sandwich crackers. I wish I would have taken pictures of it all. She couldn't find a tablecloth that she loved so she covered the table in cute wrapping paper, what a genius! She also had fun polka dotted balloons everywhere. It was so fun!

We decided to have the cupcakes match the cute plates and I fell in love with these colors. Mindy found these cute polka dot sprinkles at Wal-Mart in the wedding/party favor isle. This was by far the easiest cupcake project ever. I need to do more projects with her. They say simple is better and in this case it really was. They turned out cute even though some of the frosting didn't stay very well. Thanks Mindy!

Spring is in the air!

I made these for our ward talent show. I love this time of year when I get to decorate with Spring in mind! The colors are so happy!

The S-P-R-I-N-G letters are made with white chocolate. I melted it in a squeeze bottle, traced the letters on wax paper, let them dry then placed them on the cupcakes.

This jelly bean cupcake flower was so fun to do. I used the Jolly Rancher kind to get these fun colors. The yellow flower by the jelly beans was made by cutting a marshmallow in thirds and coating the sticky part in colored sugar. I used Dots candy for the centers.

The bows and loopy flowers are made from marshmallow fondant. I attempted to make my own. It worked but the pieces didn't dry completely like store bought fondant even though I did them 3 days prior. It was easy to make and work with though. I read somewhere that if your making flowers you can add gum paste so I will try this next time and see if it makes a difference. Here's the recipe for Marshmallow fondant:

16 oz marshmallows (make sure they're not stale)
2 T water
2 lbs powdered sugar (sift it to get out the little lumps)
1/2 c crisco

Coat the bowl of your stand mixer with a layer of crisco & attach your dough hook. Melt the marshmallows and water in a double broiler or microwave (I microwave) then pour into your prepared bowl. Pour in 1/2-3/4 of the powdered sugar & mix on low. As that gets mixed in, add the remaining powdered sugar. It ends up being like play dough. If it's too thick/dry don't add water, add crisco. If it's too soft add more powdered sugar. This recipe makes about 3 lbs but you can 1/2 it pretty easily if you want. Store it in a ziplock & it will keep quite a while.

For the rainbow cupcake I used the Airhead licorice pieces for the rainbow (it stuck in the cupcake really well) and piped on clouds.

Bad Case Of Stripes Cupcakes

I got to go read this book to Ethan's first grade class. He choose the book and thought it would be cool if I could bring a treat to go with it. He is so my son! Treats just make everything more fun! I wasn't sure what to bring that would go with the story except Lima Beans and that was definitely not cool so my next though was cupcakes- surprised?

This is what I came up with.

To get the stripes I used a parchment bag (its better if it's disposable) and painted 5 different colored stripes on the inside of the bag with a small paint brush and the Wilton gel colors. The lines need to be thick enough to color the whole bag of white frosting but not to thick that it comes out clumpy. Once you've painted the bag, carefully add the white frosting so you don't smear the stripes too bad. Then have fun seeing all the fun colors it makes.