Father's Day

Father's Day is this week and we are baking up Dad's favs! First up our hole in one for the dad that loves to golf.

If Dad loves baseball this will be a hit!

                         Or just tell him how much you love him with some decadent dark chocolate.

Sam's Bday

My niece (and Yoly's baby girl) turned 17 last week. (geesh we are getting old) To celebrate the occasion we made everything pink! First we transformed the cupcake stand. Then we made red velvet with cream cheese buttercream ( a crowd favorite) and vanilla cupcakes with hot pink buttercream. We also made Sam's favorite carrot cake- (sans raisins or nuts) with a cream cheese icing.   To top it off we made pink crowns of white chocolate to top the cupcakes. Soooo yummy!!!!

flower pot cake

I start culinary school to become a pastry chef (sounds so fancy!) on July 5th and I can't wait to make creations like this! One word- AMAZING!!!!

Check out the Blooming Flowerpot Cake by Perfect Endings that goes for $100 dollars and you can buy it thru Williams Sonoma.  Here is what you get:

Velvety-rich five-layer chocolate devil’s food cake with chocolate-caramel truffle cream filling and coffee buttercream frosting topped with hand-sculpted sugar paste flowers and green fondant icing leaves.

Sweet 16

                                                                                                  (pic on right is Birthday girl- Brianna)

Memorial Day weekend we were super busy! (which is a wonderful thing) Between all the family get togethers and BBQ's Yoly and I had to find a way to bake and decorate 100 cupcakes for my friends' daughter Brianna's  sweet sixteen. Well- we did it! (whew)

For some reason I get caught up in the event, the theme, colors, etc and I start seeing big colors, bold flavors and my creative juices are flowing. This complicates everything because I probably should just doing one or two patterns, flavors, or decorations and perfect them. Fortunately, but my left brain is louder so I end up going all out. This thrills party goers- but time management proves to be challenging. lol

The party theme was a masquerade theme with gold, red, and black colors. I searched high and low for masquerade type pastry tools- but to no avail. All good though I found some crown and star molds that looked pretty regal. I made chocolate and vanilla cupcakes. (from scratch-Yoly has banned boxed cake mix from my pantry lol) For the frosting I did a traditional vanilla buttercream, a milk chocolate buttercream, and a chocolate ganache glaze. As far as decor I made fondant stars, used sprinkles and made white chocolate and milk chocolate stars, and crowns.

                                                               Tray of chocolate stars

So here is where it gets messy- I'd never made a ganache glaze or home made chocolates using molds. Feeling fearless at this point I decided to just do it. The good news is the process was relatively easy. Yoly was panicking because she thinks experimenting is not ok the day of an event-and she's absolutely right. But since by this point I was already in rebel mode I assured her it would be fine and kept going. (I was internally freaking out praying for success lol)

Lucky for me the stars and crowns turned out to be super delicious and looked so pretty.  Of course I bought way too much chocolate (I can't resist a sale) so I decided to make a candy tray of different colored stars with the leftovers and the kids loved them!

   Chocolate Ganache glazed vanilla cupcake topped with red white chocolate star.

The fondant was pretty easy too- just like cutting cookies in star shapes and assembling them together. Now I would say the biggest lesson I learned from this was sometimes simple is just as beautiful, and NEVER USE BLACK SPRINKLES!!! Look at the pic- the sprinkles look like pepper- ewww! lol what can I say- trial and error!!!

If you want to try this at home -look for molds and ready made chocolate for melting at your local craft stores. All you have to do is melt it, mix it, pour it, and wait.

Black sprinkle cupcakes- tasty yet look like cracked pepper lol

Lots of variety

And how can I forget to mention my hubby helped customize the stand- and made it gold- then Yoly (being the perfectionist that she is lol) got some black ribbon to give it a polished look and the result was perfection!!!

Local flavor: Mother-daughter chocolatiers find sweet balance

This story is such an inspiration I had to share! Love it!!! The Cupcake Chicas are next!!! : )
Click the link for full story

Local flavor: Mother-daughter chocolatiers find sweet balance

Oprah cupcakes

I been watching the Oprah show ever since I can remember. Weekdays at 4pm have always been my time to soak it all in and I'm so bummed that today is her last show! I wanted to make some special Oprah cupakes and have a party- then I realized the only attendees at my oprah party would be me and my 7 month old. So instead of hosting a shin dig of my own- it will be just me and a box of kleenex.(keeping my fingers crossed that my baby is napping at that time lol) Anyway I found a cool blog that has some printable Oprah cupcake toppers- and I just had to share! The cool thing about these are that the technique can be applied for birthdays, graduations and more. Just make a template-insert pic and you can create your very own toppers! Here's the link for the O toppers- http://www.nobiggie.net/2011/05/oprah-party-cupcake-toppers-free-printables.html?replytocom=16144

And how can we forget the amazing cake that Buddy aka Cakeboss made for Oprah's O magazine anniversary?! Looks so yummy and the design is genius!

OMG an Asparagus cake

On this blog I initially wanted to post just our creations and tips etc- but the more explore, the more I find all these super cool baking blogs- and I must share! So on Sweetapolita's blog she makes these gorgeous cake creations (that I can't wait to learn how to do in school) and I'm obsessed with this cake! Look at the asparagus- they look so real- but they are actually just fondant that were decorated to look real! Can you believe they are edible?! I mean- a mouth full of fondant isn't exactly tasty- but these look so real I find myself wondering if they even crunch when you bite them! (of course they don't) I will be attempting this cake in 5...4...3...2...- is it anyone's birthday yet? What's your favorite veggie you'd like to see on a cupcake? I'm down for the challenge!!!