Helicopter Cupcakes!

My girlfriend from work had the amazing idea to take her sons to the Helicopter Museum for their 3rd Birthday Party. Well, what is a party at the Helicopter Museum without Helicopter Cupcakes. That's right, individual helicopters for each little one at the party to enjoy. I was so happy and thankful that she asked me to do these cupcakes, but I was also excited to see that it would be testing my talents. For these cupcakes I used royal icing for the first time, as well as a star tip design across a whole cupcake, both things I have always wanted to do. The cupcakes were a vanilla cake with a hint of orange. A few days ahead of time I made royal icing and piped circles out on wax paper and let them harden for a day or so. Then I dyed some royal icing and made hair. I really enjoyed working with royal icing and I think that I will try to use it more often. Next, I made homemade buttercream icing in blue and red. With the red I had incredible difficulty with my first try to make it, which ended up with A at Acme getting me more food coloring. The second try was PERFECT and we moved on :) I iced the cupcakes one day ahead of time with white buttercream to keep the cupcakes fresh and the next day used the red and blue to create star designs over all of the cupcakes. I left a corner untouched by the colored icing for the window of the helicopters. On the day of the party I brought all of my things to the museum and finished them there because I did not want them to get messed up on the 35 minute drive. I used pieces of a Hershey bar as the tail of the helicopter, and iced them. Finally I placed fondant propellers that I cut out the night before on each cupcake, along with the faces. Everyone seemed to enjoy them and they turned out really cute. I am posting a few pictures of these because I they were so adorable! Thank you E, and Happy Birthday J & T!

I added a "3" to two cupcakes for the Birthday Boys

Enjoy :)

Valentine's Day Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes

Every month at work we have a little social breakfast. The month I signed up for was February. Obviously our group decided to do a Valentine's Day theme. We had bagels, fruit, and some cereal but we wanted some kind of treat as well. We decided that making ice cream cone cupcakes was the best idea ever, and it was. I went home and baked two batches of cupcakes (one vanilla and one chocolate). Baking them in ice cream cones was much easier than I thought it would be, and each cone held less cake batter than a regular cupcake cup would be which makes this a really great treat for kids. I made the cupcakes and let them cool, deciding to decorate them at work because I was nervous about traveling with fully decorated cupcakes that were standing up in a box. It was a good idea in the end. I will admit I did not use homemade icing for these cupcakes, but I mixed up some of the icing and cake flavors. There were some vanilla cupcakes with vanilla icing, some with chocolate, and some chocolate cupcakes with vanilla icing, and some with chocolate. My coworker helped me put sprinkles and little candy hearts on them before we put them on display. They were a hit!

Angry Birds All Over!

Nephew C was turning 6 and he was REALLY EXCITED! He was now going to be able to bring cupcakes into school for his class. With the wonderful website of Pinterest my sister-in-law stumbled across a really cute idea to make Angry Bird cupcakes. Angry Birds is a fun, addictive game that you can play on a cell phone that gets the Internet. My nephews quickly found this game and discovered how much they loved it. We knew that it was going to have to be Angry Birds Cupcakes this year. We used different shaped marshmallows, colored sprinkles, and some black icing to make these fun cupcakes. His class really enjoyed them:

When it came to his party with family and friends my sister asked for me to make cupcakes. When I asked him what he wanted he said "The Red Ones!" Instantly his mom knew that he was looking for more Angry Birds Cupcakes and she said that plain cupcakes would be fine, but how could I disappoint him like that!?!? Even though he said that plain ones were "okay" as well, I had to add some special ones in for him, I made a bunch of plain cupcakes but put sprinkles on them that were the colors of the different Angry Birds characters. Then I made a few red Angry Birds just for him :) He was very happy to see them when I took them out of the box. So was my sister!

Someone's Turning 90!

One of my father's cousins needed 90 cupcakes for his mother-in-law's 90th birthday. I must admit I was truly flattered to be asked to make so many cupcakes for such a special event. They were not looking for anything too fancy, but wanted to make sure that I was using my homemade buttercream icing! I previously made Snickerdoodle cupcakes for this customer with the buttercream icing and that is why he thought of me to make the cupcakes :) I saw a great idea from a friend about a year ago where she made little flowers out of marshmallows. I thought this was a nice idea to keep things simple and pretty for the cupcakes. They turned out really nice. It took about 4 boxes to bring them all in, and I used two stands to hold only some of them. The picture below shows the ones that we put out on the dessert table. The rest of the cupcakes were still in boxes and were used to fill in gaps on the cake stands when people ate some.

I received a text the next day with "rave reviews." Their whole family really enjoyed them. I was so happy to be a part of such a special day, and it helped that they really enjoyed the treats!

Little C's 1st Birthday

It was my nephew's 1st birthday and my sister always had a party with family and friends. She already bought some animal printed plates with circles and blue and yellow all over them. She asked me to make a cake but did not know exactly what she wanted, but she wanted something that he would enjoy. I took the plate and thought about my options. C was only turning 1 so he would not fully be able to grasp the images of a lion or anything on a cake, so I decided to take the colors from the plate and make circles and stars with them. I made a round cake with blue and white insides to get a sort of zebra striped effect. Next I covered the cake in buttercream and white fondant. I cut out my shapes and placed them all over the cake, with the help of my artistic-perfectionist brother who was lurking over my shoulder the whole time to make sure that I did not place the shapes in the wrong place. The cake turned out really cute and C enjoyed digging into the blue and white inside!

This is the cake without any candles on top.

With all of the fun candles. It was his first birthday, I had to get him special candles!

This may have been my favorite part, the zebra inside!

Christening Cake

A little one was getting Christened and I knew just how to celebrate his beautiful day. A simple cake was all that was needed, with a giant baby blue cross of course. I was able to decorate this cake with some different colored flowers because it was also the middle of Spring, and I felt that it seemed to fit. My sister in law helped me with the writing because she wanted to try it. I loved using my new flower press for this cake, it turned out to be a really pretty cake.

The Wine Lover's Birthday Cake

It was my aunt's birthday and my cousin wanted to get a fun cake to go along with the wine-tasting party she was throwing for just the girls. There was only a small group of ladies getting together the party so I made a small circle cake. I used a chocolate chip cake recipe and covered it in buttercream icing. For the decorations I cut up different gummy treats to look like grapes and made a wine bottle out of fondant, an actual wine cork, and wrapper. With a few green vines and a "Happy Birthday," this cake was finished. It was delicious :)

Tiger Anniversary Cake

I was really excited when a High School friend asked me to make an Anniversary Cake for one of her family members. She saw some of the cakes I had made and put on facebook and asked me to make something special for someone in her family. She came up with the idea of mixing a tiger and having "Happy Anniversary" written on the cake, and I took the reigns from there. I decided to make a two tiered cake for the amount of people the cake would be for. For the top tier I wanted to make it a blank canvas so that I could write on it. I decided to make a circle cake then cover it with black fondant and make it pop by using orange icing to write on it. For the bottom tier I made a square cake and covered it with orange homemade buttercream (I ALWAYS use homemade buttercream, no bought icing here!). Next I cut strips of black fondant to create tiger stripes. It turned out looking really cool!

My First Order!

My mom's co-worker was throwing a big Sweet 16 party for her daughter and needed a cake to go with the Hollywood theme and asked me if I would be interested in doing it. My immediate thought "YES! YES! OF COURSE!" So that became my very first order :) I tried out some techniques I picked up from watching Baking shows on my favorite network, and used some fun new products that I had always wanted to get from an Arts and Craft store that I stop at often. This cake needed to feed 70 people so I decided to use my new square cake pans because they were three different sizes. I used the two largest sizes and made a two tiered cake. I made two squared cakes in each size so that it would hold together as two tiers and not fall in. This cake was chocolate on the bottom layer, and white cake on the top layer. In retrospect, I should have done it the opposite because of the colored fondant I used on the top tier and bottom tiers, but it turned out fine anyway. Next I was able to use Rice Krispie Treats to make shapes for the clapper, Hollywood Star, and film reel. From there I made some fun designs with my birthday present from the boyfriend, a Cricut Cake Cutter! This thing is incredible and I LOVE IT! I added some fun glittery dust to the top, and here is how it turned out:

This was a big task for my first cake, but it was so much fun!

How it all began.

Hello blogging world! I have been making cakes, cupcakes, and various treats for years now. Since I started, I have had some friends, and family friends ask me how much it costs for one of my cakes or a batch of cupcakes. This made me start thinking about a fun business idea...CAKES AND CUPCAKES FOR EVERYONE! :) If people were interested, why didn't I think of it before? So then it started. I took pictures of all of the cakes and different things I had made for my family: a turtle made out of cupcakes for nephew E, baseball cupcakes for nephew C, an under the sea theme for the boyfriend, a bunny with a bow-tie for Easter, two Toy Story cakes for the nephews, and more. Here are some pictures of my first cakes that interested some friends.

 

I started getting orders from here on :) This blog will be my way to share all of the great designs for cakes, cupcakes, and other treats that my customers and I come up with for different occasions. Hopefully it will also be a way for others to get some ideas, or inspire more ideas and future customers. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!