A (Very Important) Graduation...

One of my favorite people in the whole word is my baby sister, K. We are 2 (and then some) years apart, as different as night and day, and despite this and the 200 odd miles that separate us, we are very close. So, naturally, K's graduation was EXTREMELY important to me. K had worked immensely hard, with intense determination, drive and passion to complete not just her undergrad, but her Master's degree in Accounting at UT. AND in a 5 year integrated program nonetheless. I couldn't have been prouder of my (sassy) baby sis. To make the occasion even more special, J, my sister's bestie, my honorary little sis and a welcome addition to our fantastic family, was graduating from UT as well! This was certainly, an occasion to celebrate, an occasion for a party, an occasion for... CUPCAKES!!!! (Duh, really, what did you expect?) My cupcake scheming immediately went into overdrive. These could not just be so-so cupcakes, they had to be the edible embodiment of such a milestone. Not only that, but there had to be A LOT of them (K estimated 60 would do the trick). Since I have pretty much perfected my basic cake flavor and filling options, choosing these was a no brainer. I would stick with some classic, well-received combinations- chocolate with raspberry filling, vanilla with lemon filling and strawberry with cream filling. Each cake would have the icing to match- chocolate fudge, vanilla and strawberry. Where my creativity really came into play was the toppers. Duff had some great orange and white sprinkles I would generously coat each top with, and I was also going to add some great fondant (again, this should be a palm to forehead moment) accents to each cake. I rapidly took myself to the Internet (you know what to do...) to research elements I wanted to incorporate. I finally landed on what I thought would be the perfect decorations for a burnt orange and white Hook 'Em affair. K loves my chocolate monogram look (let's face it, what's not to love there...) so I would have monogram Js and Ks with fondant flower and pearl sprinkle accents. I then was going to add some elements that were strictly UT- the burnt orange longhorn symbol, the classic UT symbol, the UT tower (with the number one lit up, naturally) and the McCombs School of Business logo (the school K spent many a long night in...). The flowers on the the chocolate monograms were to be the same color blue as the logo in the school (Human Ecology) that J graduated under. After printing some basic templates on the Internet, backing them up on cardstock and cutting them out, it was time to get to the real work! I mixed up copious amounts of burnt orange (I am still shocked I got the color right... it is a feat I will probably never be able to repeat), a bit of gray, black and blue and set to cutting. And cutting. And cutting. With the exception of the chocolate monograms, each topper was painstakingly cut out by hand with an exacto knife. This literally took me H O U R S upon H O U R S. Ah, the things you will do for the ones you love. I also carefully painted the year and the time on the UT clock towers. The time on each was set to either K or J's actual graduation time. It is this attention to detail my friends...  By the time everything was cut, dried, transported to Austin, baked, filled, topped, and artfully arranged I had probably spent about 25-35 hours on these cupcakes. A labor of love for sure. To date, these are my absolute favorite cupcakes I have ever created. Not only because they were stunning, but because they meant so much to my sister and marked such an awesome occasion. Oh, and they were delicious (as if you even had to ask)!

 Js and the McCombs logo

Js and Ks

Longhorns!

UT and Clock Towers (Note the times friends...)



Until next time, sweet dreams!

-J

A (Stranger's) Bridal Shower...

I'd like to say I'm a pretty helpful person, so when J asked (implored, perhaps) me to create cupcakes for a bridal shower she was throwing I had to say yes. Perhaps it was my love of making cupcakes, or maybe it was just J's desperate plea and relentless pestering (I kid, I kid) but I was on the case now! J and I had several brainstorming sessions to create the perfect shower cupcakes. The bride's favorite cake was red velvet with cream cheese frosting, and since I had never made a red velvet cake, I immediately went to the web where I could research and find the tastiest option. I learned a lot about red velvet (the red color originally was caused by a chemical reaction, it contains vinegar--oh and the vinegar smells like death) and found the perfect recipe. Then, it was to figure out the perfect toppers for the bride to be. We both decided we really liked the chocolate monogram look, and thought it would be cute if I could fashion the tops of cupcakes to look like the busts of a wedding dress. Both of these things I had never attempted before, but my ever loving desire to research random topics on the computer had me figuring out the techniques in no time. A trip to the store later, and I was laden with new cupcake wares, all of which would help me create some perfect designs. After finding the best monogram "S" (bride's new last initial to be) on the *gasp* Internet, I began carefully piping out melted chocolate. Before the chocolate solidified, I adorned them with little sprinkle pearls, and added a pink royal icing flower. They were quite adorable, and I was pleased. Now it was to make the cakes and dress busts. J and I decided to have a sleepover, where we would be free to create delicious treats and so I wouldn't have to transport the cakes the next day. After a few minor setbacks (I forgot the sprinkles, J didn't have a hand mixer...) we began baking away. J was my apprentice, a role she decided she would not like to take again (I run a bit of a bakesweatshop), and together we worked into the wee hours of the morning. Again we hit a few more setbacks (I turned the skin orange--can you say too much spray tan?--,the royal icing busts kept sliding off the cakes, and there was that vinegar death smell to contend with), and consumed enough batter and icing to make our teeth hurt and to feel jittery. In the end everything turned out great! After all, J had me at "I'll pay for your supplies and feed you!"

Wedding Dress Busts. I am working to perfect the look of these for the future!

Monogram Ss. Love, love, love these!

Until next time, sweet dreams!

-J

A Baby Shower (and a Snow Storm)...

Texas does get the occasional snow storm, especially North Texas. When the snow blows in, I get giddy with excitement and run to my coat closet to grab my rain boots, big, puffy, blue, marshmallow jacket, and red puff ball hat with matching gloves. Off I go, to frolic in the snow, throw snowballs, and make very attractive snow men. I'm sure true northerners would laugh at the extent of our glee at a mere inch or two of snow, as well as the way the whole city shuts down. This year we had Snowmageddon 2011. When it was all said and done, we had several inches of ice under several inches of snow, hazardous driving conditions and 4 days off of work. By day 2 of our little Snow Break I had a full blown case of cabin fever which resulted in a several mile trek on foot to the closest Target. It also resulted in my first experience working with royal icing. I had been wanting to experiment with royal icing, and I had the fortune of being able to speak with an expert at a local store on making this. Being locked in my apartment due to Snowmageddon gave me a perfect time frame to experiment, and I had the perfect occasion to experiment for! S, the same S who was a bridesmaid with me in M's wedding, was having a baby! As part of my gift, and at the request of the expectant mother I was going to make cupcakes at the baby shower. I had already settled on the cupcakes: strawberry with strawberry icing and hazelnut with chocolate hazelnut icing (no filling this time). The only thing left, was creating toppers. I felt that royal icing would give me the freedom that I lacked in fondant, and my mind was swimming with cute baby girl themed ideas. After a few trials and many errors I had perfected my royal icing technique and was crafting away. Sweet little girl A was going to have cupcakes fit for a princess, which she was sure to be!

Personalized Bottles and Diaper Pins

Little As and Duckies

Baby Booties and Baby Feet

Pacifiers and Booties

Cupcake Tower at the Shower

Cupcake Displays



Until next time, sweet dreams!

-J

A BFF's Birthday (Part 2)...

November brought C's birthday. C followed J into the world of 25dom, and as usual, we girls immediately got busy planning the party. This was a college tradition. Each birthday brought theme apartment decorations (my favorite being "Pin the Tail on the C"), new outfits for one and all, and shoe polishing of cars. We did birthdays up right in D-Town, and we carried these traditions over into our post-college years. A little scaled down, yes, but still just as festive. As we got down to planning, C decided to have a hometown, country celebration at her mom's house. We were going to have a bonfire, home-smoked barbeque and a field. To me, a big city girl, this concept was completely foreign. Bonfire? Barbeque from home? A FIELD? Ah, so little I knew about the country that my dear friends tried to educate me on. After getting over my initial shock (haha), I was excited for the celebration full of C's closest family and friends. C requested cupcakes, and I as always, was happy to oblige. I began throwing out ideas to C: pumpkin cupcakes (seriously, these things are addicting... a definite seasonal hit!), strawberry shortcake, chocolate hazelnut. We decided that those three options would be more than divine, and I got to work planning. C graciously let me slide on toppers, as there were to be many cupcakes to bake. The pumpkin cupcakes were a no brainer. The strawberry shortcake and chocolate hazelnut required a little more thought. Eventually I landed on a shortcake cupcake with mascarpone filling and strawberry icing and a hazelnut cupcake with chocolate filling and chocolate hazelnut icing. I quickly put together J's littlest bakeshop and enlisted the help of both C and J to help me bake away. After the cupcakes were crafted, they made the trip to the country where the littlest bakeshop was once again started and C and J helped me fill and ice dozens of cupcakes. The end results were quite yummy, and the party was a blast!

Yummy country cupcakes!

Until next time, sweet dreams!

-J

A Teacher's Lounge Celebration...

Once a month the teacher's lounge is fully decorated and stocked with snacks of all kinds. Decadent sausage rolls (my recipe is unrivaled), delicious snack mixes, cream cheese blocks with chipotle jelly, crackers and dips, assorted fruits and vegetables and desserts of all kinds are proudly displayed. These treats are put out once a month in honor of birthdays. Instead of having many mini-celebrations, we combine all of the birthdays into a mega celebration totally worth having. And, as all of my fellow teachers will tell you, nothing makes us happier than a delicious food day in the lounge! We live for them. My team always has November. Each teammate brings something salty or savory and something sweet. For me, it is always the sausage pinwheels and some kind of cookie. However, this year I knew I was going to bring CUPCAKES. Thanksgiving is also a time for pumpkin (um, pumpkin pie anyone? I like my whip cream with a side of pie...) and my Halloween cupcakes were such a hit, I decided to revisit my pumpkin/brown sugar/cinnamon cream cheese creation with a different topper. These were to be fall themed, so I got to work mixing fondant in foliage colors, cutting and inlaying leaves, and hand painting steams on each little cupcake. The result, as my little brother from another mother would say, was out of this world!

Some pretty (edible) fall foliage!

Some more yummy treats.

Unitl next time, sweet dreams!

-J

A Favorite Holiday...

I love Halloween. I love it in an all consuming, can't live without it, pee-my-pants excited kind of way. From the minute October (which just happens to be my favorite month) appears on my calendar, I get down right giddy. Immediately I want to bust out with the fake spiderwebs, spooky sound effects, pumpkin carving, costumes, jiggly skeletons and my very beat up copy of Hocus Pocus. In fact, I plan my All Hallows' Eve costume months in advance, each year hoping to walk away my most creative costume ever. All this is made more ironic by the fact that I hate to be scared. I hate scary movies. I hate when people pop out at me. I hate things that go bump in the night. I hate ghosts. I hate spooky woods. I even hate it when my friends try to bust into my apartment unannounced. Beginning to get the picture here? BUT I love Halloween. Go figure. To celebrate my favorite holiday, I decided to couple one love with another: Halloween and Cupcakery. After getting some fondant inspiration from Michael's, of all places, I sat down to plan what kind of cupcake I would create. These had to be knockouts. They were to be a representation of Halloween! After much deliberation, it hit me: PUMPKIN! Pumpkin is the embodiment of all things Halloweeny. To the Internet I went, where I found and modified a fantastic pumpkin cupcake recipe. The next step was the filling. I had decided that filled cupcakes would be my "signature," so filling they must have. Cream filling would not go with these pumpkin treats, so I tweaked my recipe and made a brown sugar cream filling. The next step was to decide on a frosting. Time to once again hit the books, as they say, and when I finally resurfaced I had found a wonderful cinnamon cream cheese frosting. The combination was knock-your-socks-off delicious. I decided to pass these treats out at the school, accompanied by a silly Halloween poem I wrote (I am a teacher after all...). They were a hit!

Ghosts, Pumpkins, Black Cats, and Bats... Looks like Halloween to me!

Until next time, sweet dreams!

-J



A BFF's Birthday...

I measure my years from August to August. This idiosyncrasy is definitely a byproduct of being an educator. From the minute I done my new "first day of school outfit" and gather my arsenal of green, purple and orange grading pens I start fresh, turning over a new leaf. And with this new school year came a new milestone. My best gals and I turned 25. J, as always, was the first to lead us into what I consider "real adulthood." I decided this occasion warranted fancy cupcakes, not the Betty Crocker boxed concoctions of old. Besides, let's face it, pondering what sweet treat to present my lovely friend J on her big 25th blowout definitely helped me to combat my urge to cry and enter a pre midlife crisis. The cupcakes had to be outstanding, and I knew they had to be filled. Enter the mental planning stage. I languished about thinking of what the perfect cupcake-filling-decoration match would be, and suddenly it hit me. Once on a shopping excursion, I had ridiculed dearest J about a cream-filled dessert option. To this day was still laugh about it, and so I thought a play on the famous "Hostess" cakes would be best. A chocolatey, chocolate cupcake was baked and injected with a thick vanilla cream filling. They were topped with a rich chocolate buttercream. All I had left was the piece de resistance: Tootsie Roll dinosaurs to perch on top of the cupcakes. Little T was in town, and so I quickly roped her into helping me. After purchasing the only GIGANTIC bag (seriously, I am still eating these things... and the celebration was in SEPTEMBER) of Tootsie Rolls  I could find, we set to work. We carefully rolled and cut the candies to make Brontosaurus necks with sprinkle eyes, tails and spikes. Once assembled they were an amazing birthday treat!

Please excuse the somewhat melted state of the precious dino! It had traveled in a makeshift carrier to downtown Dallas, and I did not have the foresight to take a photo before. Downtown Dallas is rough on everyone, including delicious dino cupcakes!

A whole tray of dinos, including a few that didn't get covered along the way!

Until next time, sweet dreams!

-J

A Bridal Shower...

My first attempt at "fancy" cupcakes was for the Brial Shower of my best friend at work, M. M had asked me to be a bridesmaid in her destination wedding, and her maid of honor S requested my help at the bridal shower. Since the wedding was to be on the beach in beautiful San Diego, S had decided on a beach theme for the shower. When asked to help, I immediately exclaimed, "I'll make cupcakes! Don't worry, they will be shower worthy!" I had no idea what cupcakes I was going to make, or how I was going to make them, but I was on the case now. My mind began tumbling over ideas for the next several weeks. Chocolate? Vanilla? Buttercream? Filled cupcakes? Beach motif? I finally landed on what I thought was the perfect plan: Lemon filled vanilla, and raspberry filled chocolate, both with a creamy vanilla buttercream. I would adorn the cupcakes with anything beachy I could create. While in the ATX for my spring holiday, I enlisted the help of A. We did a trial run in the kitchen of my parent's house, intensely mixing endless colors of icing dye while jamming out to Disney, and what became of it was wonderful! The actual shower cupcakes for M were perfect! Light and fluffy with a hidden surprise in the middle. The buttercream was dyed a light blue and was covered with a ghram cracker and brown sugar sand. Atop of each cupcake sat a perfect flower, seashell, sand dollar, or crab. They were a hit, and I was in love!

The little crab...

A perfect sand dollar...

A beautiful flower...

The final products, including the shells!

Until next time, sweet dreams!

-J

A modest start...

I live to be creative. I love arts, crafts, photography, diy home projects, anything really that requires a creative edge and detailed eye. Once I began applying this to cupcakes I was hooked! Making delicious, cupcakey treats for any (and every) occasion became intensely satisfying. Several things lead to my discovery of this passion, beginning with my bff A. A, one of the most crafty people I know, and I were put forth with the task of designing the groom's cake for her wedding. A knew she wanted it to be Harry Potter themed, Dr. Pepper flavored and decked out in fondant. Needless to say, we made that happen and the outcome was quite fabulous. This gave me my first experience ever with working with fondant, and I was pleased to find how fun and easy it was! Another contributor was my love of a theme. Themes please me immensely. And parties. A party with a theme? Perfection. My best gals in the Big D and I were having a sleepover... and being a lover of themes and parties, I made cupcakes. Decorated cupcakes. With boxed icing. Boxed cake. And a gel decorating pen. And thus began my modest start....

I began this blog at the instance of a close friend, whose determination far surpasses my own. Welcome to the chronicling of my cupcake adventures... enjoy!

-J