Bridal shower cupcakes

I made these for Rachel's bridal shower. I loved the colors Ann chose (light pink, coral pink and brown.) I also love that she wanted them to look simple. Sometimes I tend to go overboard. In the end simple is always better and usually prettier too. I used to always think I had to add sprinkles but I am happy with how these turned out.

So they may look simple but they still took time to make. I had a lot of fun with these recipes and I am excited to share them with you.
Strawberry (pink)cake (this is Kay Dawn's recipe)
1 box white cake mix (Duncan Hines)
1 small box strawberry jello
1/2 boiling water
3/4 cup oil
4 eggs
1/2 cup fresh mashed strawberries
Boil water in microwave. Add jello. Stir until dissolved. Add rest of ingredients. Mix few minutes on medium. Bake 350 for approx. 16 min.
Strawberry frosting *my modified version
1 stick butter
16 oz. powdered sugar
1/4 cup mashed strawberries
3 Tbsp. milk
Melt butter. Let cool. Meanwhile add sugar, straw. and milk then add butter.
*I didn't melt butter or use any milk since I was piping. I also added 6 ounces of cream cheese and 1 tsp. of vanilla.

I used a pedal tip to make the flowers (126) I used this tutorial for help. I used a smaller tip than she did.

Lemon cake- (coral pink)
I used a vanilla cake mix, 1 box of lemon pudding, 4 eggs, 1/2 cup oil, 1 cup sour cream and 1/2 water (I may have added more-I just kept adding until I got the right consistency)
*I wish I would have added lemon zest and replaced some water with lemon juice. Mine didn't have enough lemon flavor.
I used this lemon cream cheese recipe.

Too much Chocolate cake from Allrecipes.com (this is my husbands all time favorite recipe)

• 1 (18.25 ounce) package devil's food cake mix
• 1 (5.9 ounce) package instant chocolate pudding mix
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips(I only use 1 cup)

I used this chocolate frosting recipe
*Sorry for some of the camera angles. Because of the mirror I didn't want to be in the pictures.

Super size me cupcake

I made these milkshakes for our ward linger longer activity after church. These were super fun and easy. I saw these on the Wilton website and knew I wanted an excuse to own the king size cupcake pan.

I was happy to finally have a reason to use the sticks of candy I found at Wal-Mart on clearance a couple months ago. I love when I can prove to my husband that this is why I should always buy candy when its on sale because sooner or later I will find a reason to use it. =)
So these king size cupcake pans take 3 times as much batter as the standard ones. I made 24 cupcakes with 3 cake mixes.
I made a chocolate ganache for the filling since that's a lot of cake. I used the regular ganache recipe: 3 Tbsp butter, 6 Tbsp whipping cream, bring to just a boil pour over 1 cup chocolate chips. Stir until mixed. I then put this into freezer to set up for about 2 hours. I put it in my mixer and whipped it until it was a frosting like consistency. I used the Wilton bismarck tip to get the filling in the cupcake.
I used tip 1M for the swirl on top (whipping cream), added sprinkles that matched my sticks (straws) and put a gum ball (cherry) on top. Simple no coloring of frosting needed. Oh I used cream cheese frosting.

I had to use my big serving tray to transport these heavy puppies to the church.

My friend sent me this adorable picture. I got her permission to post it. I couldn't resist. What a cutie!!!

Lingerie shower cupcakes

To say I had fun making these is an understatement. They did take lots of time but it was worth it. It also helped that I love the girl who ordered them.
So I looked online for lingerie cupcake ideas and as usual everything was made of fondant. I loved the ideas I saw of making lingerie for cupcake toppers so I really wanted to figure out a way of doing it without busting out the fondant. As I was looking at a few pieces I noticed that the basic shape was like a heart. I thought to use my Wilton heart chocolate mold as the foundation and this is what I came up with. I only had time to do 8 since this was a last minute order. She needed 12 so I came up with the following SEXY cupcakes to make it complete.

I used some black chocolate I had in my freezer from Halloween(I loved the colors she chose by the way-it really was sexy) to pipe the letters with. I put the melted chocolate in a ziplock, cut the corner and traced my sticker letters that were under wax paper. I added the sprinkles/pearls before the chocolate dried. Once they were dry I peeled them carefully from the wax paper and then placed them in the frosting.

Here are the close-ups. The black shiny one was white chocolate but I painted it with black gel paste and added the lace in pink frosting. The other one is suppose to be zebra print. I tried copying some of the toppers on line and this one didn't turn out as well as I had hoped.

Oh how I wish I could be the kind of blog that takes the time to explain everything in great detail and have a picture to show along the way. I just don't have the time to do that with 3 small children. I am so sorry. The one of the right was done by adding shavings of semi melted chocolate to the side of the heart and then shaping it how I wanted.





I did take this one picture during clean up to show you how I started to shape these. For the bra and panty ones I cut where the knife is and shaped them. For the longer bodice ones I cut just the point of the heart off and then used another heart for the bottoms.

This is how they were displayed.

Baby bird shower

This was for Mindi's baby shower. I loved the bird theme especially during this spring season. Jill did the adorable invitation that said "Mindi is adding to her nest." Mary did the amazing strawberry marshmallow kabobs on the left (I didn't get a close-up.) Alisha did the fantastic centerpiece which was my favorite part.

Here's the close-up. We gathered sticks from her neighborhood trimmed them down and Alisha got scraps of her fabric and sewed them into birds. How cute is she! Mindi had the great idea to set this out as her table centerpiece during the spring months. I think I may have to copy although my birds won't look nearly as cute. You could use paper birds. What a easy decoration idea! Thanks Alisha!

These are the cupcakes Mary and I decorated. I was so happy that we just had Easter so I could use some Easter candy (Peeps, jelly beans, and Cadbury mini eggs.)



We copied this from Martha Stewart. If you can't tell what it is they are little baby birds waiting to be fed. We colored cream cheese frosting to match the toasted coconut, frosted the cupcake dipped it into the coconut, piped on pink birds(it was hard to get them to look like heads) using tip 12, piped on little beaks with tip 3 (it was hard to get the beaks to look open), and piped on black eyes with tip 2. I was so happy Mary helped me with these tedious things since I was so tired. I had been up since 4 that morning working on Elmo.

I wasn't sure which angle showed off the birds better.

For the chocolate nests we used tip 1M and piped on the frosting the opposite way as normal(starting from the middle). Some of them I had to do an extra layer on the outer edge to look like a nest. We added the mini eggs or jellybeans next. For the smaller looking treats Jill made a thick chocolate cookie which we then decorated the same as the big ones but with just one egg or bird in it. For the peeps I cut the tail off a little, placed it on the cupcake, then piped the nest around it.

This is Jill's awesome drink holder.

This was the gift table. Jill made these cookie take home treats which were super cute.

It's a...

Margaret ordered this with the Elmo cake. She also wanted to serve this while her family was there for Haines birthday party. She is pregnant and wanted to use this cake as a way to tell everyone including herself what she was having. A few days ago she brought me a sealed envelope with the sex of her baby inside. I then baked a 6 inch strawberry cake, if it was a boy I would have used a vanilla cake dyed blue.

I covered the cake with cream cheese frosting and pink and blue question marks. This was one of the funnest cakes I've ever made. I thought this was such a fun way to tell everyone what you're having. In fact if I have another one I want to have someone do this for me.

Margaret emailed me this picture. It's a...girl!! Yea, Congrats!

Elmo

I made this for Margaret's boy who is turning 2. You can't tell by this picture that the Elmo is it's own cake that I placed on top of a square cake. I wasn't very proud of the cake so I didn't take any close ups. I loved doing the Elmo part but the large cake (she needed this to feed 30 people) underneath was hard to smooth. Let's just say I need to continue to practice doing this. Gotta love sprinkles!
* The directions on the Elmo pan said to use a star tip for his fur but I thought it would look more realistic to use the hair/grass tip. I was happy with how it turned out.

This is a bad picture but maybe you can see the dept a little better.