it's beginning to look a lot like christmas....

its almost the first of december and we are truly about to enter the holiday season! i wish the weather would follow suit but its another overcast muggy day here in auckland!  the christmas brunch yesterday was a huge success and everyone loved the cupcake wreath! i managed to pull it together and make everyone a take home cupcake too with little christmas trees on top :)

as mentioned in the previous post i made gingerbread cupcakes which tasted delicious! i got the recipe from this book.... (it involves crystalized ginger and spices but is pretty simple!)... i once again got it from my favourite book resource... the library!

i spent most of saturday coating the mint leaves with melted chocolate, putting them in the fridge, letting them set then removing the leaves from the back to reveal beautiful chocolate leaves! this was much easier (however time consuming) than i thought and they looked amazing... if i do say so myself.....

as i use butter in my icing recipes i can never achieve white icing so for these i had to use store bought (gasp!!) icing.. it was 'betty crocker vanilla frosting' and it was surpisingly nice and easy to work with! i will definately buy it again when i need white icing! (great for christmas projects).... i also added a bow and some extra decorations to the wreath to give it more context, i used plastic bells and tiny presents (originally tree decorations)

this is a great idea for a table center piece ... besides the leaves (which are time consuming) it was relatively easy and really effective!

i topped my christmas tree to be cupcakes with the same white icing and used a knife to texture it... i let it set and then swirled a christmas tree on top with a kinda star tip (sorry dont know the number of this one) .. starting with a big circle and gradually making it smaller as i increased the height....

i used edible silver balls and red stars as the decoratins and put a little yellow star on the top of each tree... i used edible white dust/glitter to sprinkle over! AND just to top the whole thing off put a little present under each

super cute!!

my head is now filled with christmas decorating ideas and i think im going to try snowman cupcakes next! stay tuned xx

 

oh christmas tree oh christmas tree....

well we are entering my favourite time of year! i love the food, the decorations, the music, the weather, time off from work, road trips, family and presents :P  I put my tree up on wednesday even though it was far too early ... we always believe the date to put it up is the 1st of December but me and T got a tree for our place so i just wanted to decorate it asap! it was a pretty cheap warehouse version but suprisingly it didnt look too sparse which is what always bothers me about cheap trees! i managed to decorate it and the rest of the living room in a not TOO tacky manner ... i might put some pix up ....

the baking project this weekend is a christmas wreath made out of cupcakes for my mums xmas brunch tomorrow (got the design idea from the hello, cupcake!), i am going to bake gingerbread cupcakes and have been making white chocolate leaves (by brushing mint leaves with melted chocolate, letting them dry then peeling the leaves off) at work all day! the idea is to top the cupcakes with the leaves and round red lollies (jaffas in my case) and arange them in a circle, i got a bow and some cute decorations to enhance it too ... i will post the pix tommorrow after i have finished it, my mum ALSO requested a cupcake for everyone to take home if i have time so might make 8 individual chocolate ones with a little iced xmas tree on top....

once again... fingers crossed

what a weekend....

well my weekend was truly taken over by cupcakes! i was supposed to start baking at around 11am on Saturday but due to oven issues and sleeping in issues i didnt start till around 4.30pm... needless to say it kind of snowballed from there.. leading to a bed time of 3am with an unwelcome alarm at 6am to finish off putting caramel corn manes on the lion cupcakes and get to the market by 7.30am!

had heaps of fun and saw a few people from the facebook group (special prices for them of course :P ) which was great!

we sold quite a lot of cakes to the people that came but to be honest the market was a bit lame! there was only a handful of stalls and consquenstly not much foot traffic! i took the rest to work this morning and they went like hot cakes! so next plan of attack is more planning and a better market! i will have to go to a few first to really get a guage on how many cakes to make in regards to how many stalls and people they have markets! someone suggested a market in grey lynn so may have to check that out....

thought my stall looked quite cute with heaps of different retro plates and little cups .... heres a few pics from the day

my table with all the plates and some of the cupcakes on (rest were stored in boxes under the table)

my first shot at mini cupcakes... they were a huge hit and my fatest seller! brownie flavour, vanilla with choc icing, carrot and vanilla with orange icing... yum!

chocolate cupcakes with melted white chocolate on top and a yummy oreo

orange cupcakes with tasty orange icing and the cutest little flower!

crazy planning....

3 days till my market debut with my cupcakes! i have planned to make 150 cupcakes but have no idea if it is do-able! but we will see.... i have decided on the following flavours

carrot
lemon
orange
banana (and walnut)
brownie
chocolate
vanilla

phewp! all with different designs on them! i think icing them is obviously going to be the most difficult thing to under go... but i have enlisted my lovely boyfriend who said he will be mr mixer and washer :)

ingrediants cost me $90 so i hope to at least break even, its hard to tell as i have no idea what the foot traffic is like or interest is in cupcakes at this market!

hold tight for heaps of photos from the baking, icing and selling !!

the land before time...

I made the cake! It took me far longer than I had intially thought, although that is because I used a completely inappropriate recipe for the first attempt! The cake was all crumbly and just fell apart :( Goodbye 8 eggs, loads of milk, flour, sugar... etc etc


So instead of trying to be fancy I just pulled out the most simple cake recipe I could find and made sure it came out of a cake decorating book ..... (guaranteeing it would be rubust!)


I baked two round cakes out of said butter cake mix ( with cocoa added) and cut out the shapes to make the dino shape (1 cake was used as the actual body and the other was cut into two to make the tail and head)

 

Then I attempted a crumb coat (a rough coat of icing to seal in the crumbs) ... but as im impatient it only lasted in the freezer for about 15 minutes... so out it came... looking PRETTY rough but ready for its final icing coat (well almost ready!)

After perfecting the icing it was time to do what i had been looking forward to... decorate it! I had mint truffle hersheys kisses, brown m&ms (regular and mini) and big chocolate buttons! I just put the spots all over and also used regular sized m&ms for his toes :D

i was quite pleased with the final result and decided to give him a smile instead of scary teeth :P not sure what sort of dino this would actually be considered... but anyhow his name is cliff and he is going to get eat VERY shortly.....

 

hello cupcake....

got this book from the library! its so rad :D although in saying that the designs look EXTRA tricky and involve allsorts of decorations (its an american book after all)!

they have a blog and a strangley designed website to compliment the book ...

im going to photocopy some of the designs though for my baking folder, there are some super cute christmas ideas including christmas baubles and snowmen! my mum is having a christmas 'girls' brunch and she asked me to make some christmas themed cupcakes for it so may try them out

anyway... if youre into baking im sure youve already heard of this book but thought id blog it anyway :)

bought most of the decorations etc for the impending dinosaur cake today :) including mint hersheys kisses for the spine :D found a pic of what its 'supposed' to look like....

headache time...

i am trying to plan a birthday cake, well im lying ,,,,its more like trying to copy a birthday cake..

its for my someone special and hopefully isnt too imature haha... well it is ....but its so cute i couldnt pass up the chance to make it!

its a dinosaur..... i know i know.... anyone over the age of 10 probably shouldnt have a dinosaur birthday cake but as i said i honestly cant resist it! i found it on youtube and its part of the howdini series!

my favourite bit are the spikes made out of hersheys kisses *swoooon*

its going to be the first birthday cake i have made and hopefully it will turn out well (fingers crossed again), im also going to compliment it with some cute dinosaur cupcakes! after last weeks success with fondant i thought i would give making some realllllly SIMPLE fondant dinosaurs to top them with :)

i am going to make it saturday night i think so will post the pictures shortly after that :D

fondant fun...

Well after failing so badly last time at my fondant attempt I decided to wipe the slate clean and try it again, this time armed with the right sort of coloring and an easier design... little roses...  I didnt really have any tools but found an amazingly simple way to create them! where? youtube of course :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzp3XfhUpQ4

I was super please at how they turned out even though they were not perfect I was surprised that they ended up even resembling roses on the first attempt :> the only real problem was that they took FOREVER.

 

I also tried another chocolate cupcake recipe with real chocolate in AND buttermilk and its definitely the best so far :) so anyway I topped 6 of these yummy cakes with baby pink icing and the fondant roses i made (which are sort of baby blue ish?!) and used the wilton star tip #18 to add a bit of fancy stuff around them.

 

 

And with the left over 6 cupcakes you ask?? I just decided to try out a two colored icing technique i have kinda been researching... didnt really turn out as well as i had hoped but there's always next time... they still look cute i think?!

 

I want to try this with another tip to get more of a ruffle effect... i was thinking orange and yellow to top some orange cupcakes i am going to try in preparation to sell at the markets :)

Anyway thats all for now, im exhausted after a pretty busy weekend

xx

oh my gosh...

I was on google images searching for pictures of an icing technique I want to master and I came across THESE...

They are cupcakes with american soft drink themed flavours... I thought they looked really yummy for supermarket style cupcakes, especially the orange crush ones!

Every once in awhile I thank god I don't live in america as I would probably start eating every treat available and add to their obesity statistics...

boom boom boom...

had heaps of fun last night letting off fireworks and eating.... note to anyone interested in fire safety, do not stand a long firework with lots of power in a glass jar...... for some reason i thought that this would be sufficient in stabilizing the firework...

apparently not! it fell over and starting shooting and banging all over the garden..... we had to run inside, shut the door and watch in horror!

before we got into the explosives we ate good food! paris was mesmerized by the lemon cupcakes

my mum and paris

with the sweet reward... an empty case

After getting hours (well not literally) of entertainment from photographing the dog's desperation for a cupcake things got turned up a notch and the fireworks got underway! It was a shame that it was so wet
:( while we let them off the cheap neighbours opened their curtain slightly (as though they thought they were being secretive) and watched on.... buy your kids some fireworks misers!  I made a point of not buying the fireworks from the warehouse this year and it paid off.. they were pretty impressive AND loud

todd the designated fireworks chief lighting the first ones

the results!

ALSO.... I am officially booked in for the Alexandra markets on Sunday the 22nd of November to sell my cupcakes! So I am just planning the assortment and numbers I am going to make.. its a bit tricky as I have no idea as to what sort of numbers they get through there but was thinking of trying to make 100-150 cupcakes!

What a mission! But it will be fun and I have enlisted Todd as my assistant... im sure he's wrapped :D