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!!!