GIANT CUPCAKE OF WIN!

For what feels like an eternity, but was probably more like 4 months, I have been foaming at the mouth for this particular cupcake cake pan. Dude. It's a cake pan... that makes a cupcake shaped cake. I called it cupcakezilla. You may recall my earlier post: Cupcakezilla.

Well I recently took a little drive (and when I say "little drive" I mean it the same way that the civil war was a "little spat"), to hang with my bestest buddy. And the visit was eventful, not just because I got the privilege of hanging out with such an awesome person as she, but also because she BOUGHT ME THE PAN I WANTED. If we were cartoons, I would be hug-crushing her body while hearts floated out of my head. I'm not joking.

So when I came home, I made this cupcake cake for Easter dinner with the fam. It was devils food cake with butter-cream, and then I got these nifty little chocolate molds. Moulds? Molds. *checks dictionary.com* Okay, yes, molds. No green stuff. So I have these little butterfly lollipops that I used strawberry chocolate for, by which I mean strawberry white chocolate, this stuff is delicious. And then I have the cupcake molds. I made the bottoms chocolate, with caramel inside, and the tops strawberry again. I laughed that everything on my platter was cupcake - except there was no actual cupcake.

I stuck the lollipops in the top, put three choco-cakes around the cake, sprayed the butter-cream pink, and here's my finished product:

It seemed to go over well, when I got ready to go home all I found left was some crumbs and one butterfly. Dessert win.

Ladybug Cake

Yesterday, apparently, I sat gazing at my hands and cursing their flesh toned-ness... I mean, why be white when I can be red? I swear if I took photos of *just* my hands, I could pass as a red Oompa Loompa. Surely.

I decided to make fondant ladybugs. Making fondant ladybugs means dying fondant red, unless you have the financial capability and store availability to buy red fondant. I had neither, so I dyed my hands. And then with my hands I dyed the fondant. In that order, though in fairness it wasn't meant to be that way.

I made about 6 ladybugs of varying sizes. The largest one is about the size of a mini muffin, the smallest about the size of a nickel.

Instructions are:

Take a red ball, roll it between your hands into an egg shape. With a knife, press a line down into the back of the egg shape, lengthwise, press down about 2/3rds to the bottom. You're left with something resembling a red coffee bean.

Get a smaller peice of black fondant, roll it out between your hands into a short rope, fatter in the middle. Curve it backwards, put it onto the end of the red coffee bean.

Use the end of a paintbrush, toothpick, whatever - to poke eye holes in the black fondant, roll your tool around some to loosen up the hole.

Use small balls of white fondant, roll them into a teardrop shape, push them into the face holes skinny end first and press down to make eyes.

From this point on you can simply use black colour paste and a paintbrush, paint dots on the eyes and on the back of the ladybugs.

This is as far as mine got. You can also find something curved to indent a smile into the face, or use black rice noodles for antennae.

After this point, I used my apple cake (here) in a square pan. No filling, though if I'd had my apple jelly with me (I'm on vacation), I would have filled it with that. Rum butter-cream on top, and then I dyed the rest of my butter-cream green and piped grass on top, before placing my ladybugs on it. I finished it off with some red smarties that I found. I'm like the scavenger baker.

Dragonfly Cupcakes - Lemon Raspberry

Can't witty, I has teh dumb.

My mom requested these for a group she's going to, so I did my best. They're a lemon cupcake, filled with raspberry jam, decorated with butter-cream, colour spray and fondant. They take a bit of work, let me warn you.

Lemon Cupcakes

• 3 cups self-rising flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 2 cups white sugar
• 4 eggs, at room temperature
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons lemon zest
• 1 cup whole milk, divided
• 2 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, divided

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Line 30 cupcake pan cups with paper liners.
Sift the self-rising flour and salt together in a bowl. In another bowl, beat the unsalted butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating each egg until incorporated before adding the next. Mix in the vanilla extract and lemon zest.
Gently beat the flour mixture into the butter mixture, one third at a time, alternating with half the milk and half the lemon juice after each of the first 2 additions of flour. Beat until just combined; do not over mix.
Fill the prepared cupcake liners with batter 3/4 full, and bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 17 minutes. Let the cupcakes cool in the pans for about 10 minutes before removing them to finish cooling on a rack.

Note: I didn't have self-rising flour, so I used 3 tsp of baking powder along with the flour.

After the cupcakes cooled, I just took the wide end of a chopstick to poke a hole through the top of each one, about halfway down, and then put my jam in a piping bag and piped it in.

Then I made butter-cream, I used a couple tablespoons of lemon juice in place of the vanilla and some of the milk.

Dragonflies are as follows:

Roll out white fondant and use a small heart shaped cookie cutter, cut in half up and down for the wings. The body I just rolled out with my hands, thinner on one end, and the head is just a ball - all dyed black.

The antennae on mine are just a thin thread covered wire, but you could play around with that - try rice noodles, whatever.

Voila.

Little Miss Sunshine's Birthday Cake

I have a friend who is a bundle of get-up-and-go (I think she's masochistic, to be quite honest), who turned 29 on Saturday (for the first time, at least), loves pink, and also happens to be getting divorced.

I made her cake. With the above spec-combo to work with, we came up with this:

This, in case it's not abundantly obvious, is her kicking her ex, in the butt, off the cake.

Rather than go into all the recipe details this time around, I'm just going to say what it was. If anyone actually wants recipes, just ask and I will dutifully forthwith append them.

Cake: Yellow (doubled, that's 4 round cake pans)

Filling: Strawberries in syrup (1 carton chopped strawberries, splash of water, half cup of sugar, lemon juice in a saucepan), + custard.

Decorations: Pink and black fondant, butter-cream, little sugar buttons and of course the happy black couple on top.

Turned out well, my piping penmanship still leaves something to be desired but overall I was happy with it. Tasted fantastic.

Here's the birthday girl helping the scene along:

Annnd the front with the bow.