One Giant Cupcake

What to do, what to do?  I could do laundry - nope.  I could clean anything - nope.  I want to bake!  So this week I decided to make a giant cupcake.  I used the Wilton Giant Cupcake Pan.  My first step was to make the lining for the giant cupcake.  I have seen so many pictures online of beautiful smooth liners and wasn't sure how to do it.  I found instructions to use candy melts on the Oh, Sugar Cakes blog (www.ohsugarcakes.blogspot.com).  I tried it and it worked better than I could have expected!

First step was to gather supplies, and melt the chocolate.  I chose purple - I have been really liking purple lately!

I melted half of the candy melts in the microwave, poured them in the bottom of the giant cupcake pan and used a mini spatula to spread the melted candy up the sides of the liner.  Then I chilled it for at least 20 minutes and repeated the process with the remaining candy melts. 

I had read online people had trouble getting the candy liner out of the pan so I made sure to leave it in the fridge for a long time.  I think I left it in there for 40 minutes.  When it was ready to come out I was so nervous.  I made my husband come with me - but it was no problem!  The candy liner popped right out and it looked great!

I then baked the giant cupcake.  The pan is one piece and the bottom of the cupcake is quite a bit larger than the top so I baked the bottom and then baked the top separately so I wouldn't overbake the top.  I trimmed the bottom of the cupcake so that it would fit into my candy liner.  Then I frosted it and gently dropped it into the liner.  I leveled both pieces of the cake and the put the top on the cupcake.

I decorated the top with buttercream frosting.  I wanted a lighter pink frosting, but it was getting late and I put a lot of gel color in the frosting so you can see it came out bright pink.  Note to self - it is true to put a little color in at a time until you get the color you want!!   I used the Wilton 2D tip.  The top took a lot of frosting and I would have used more on the top but I ran out.  Next time I think I will try something different on the top because I am not a huge fan of how it looks.  I think the next time will come sooner than later because I really love this cake and had fun making it!

Anniversary Cupcakes

I have a great group of friends from my old neighborhood.  It really is amazing that we all moved in so close to each other at the same time and became such good friends.  Ten years, four marriages and six kids later we decided to have a party to celebrate!  I made cupcakes for the occasion.  I frosted all of the cupcakes with buttercream and then applied fondant in different designs.  I used homemade Marshmallow Fondant.   For the adults I put a "10" on the cupcakes to commemorate the anniversary, for the girls I did cute pink piggies and for the boys brown sheep.  I got the idea from Joanna Farrow's book Cupcakes.  They were cute, but the sheep look a little weird I think!  Next time I need to work on those and possibly some other animals.  Maybe for one of my kids birthdays I will have a barn party and make the cupcakes - or maybe order from Publix :).  Just kidding - I am almost ready to vow to never buy a cake again - almost!  Here are some pictures:

I bought cupcake liners on-line that keep their color better after being baked.  Can you tell - the blue color of the liner still looks pretty good.  You have to look for cupcake liners that say "grease-proof".

My First Fondant Cake!

I decided to experiment with fondant.  How hard can it be right?  I heard that the homemade marshmallow fondant was much cheaper to use and tasted better than regular fondant so I decided to see what all the fuss was about.  I used a standard marshmallow fondant recipe I found online:

16 oz marshmallows
2lbs confection sugar
2 Tbsp water
2 Tsp vanilla

Making the fondant wasn't as hard as I thought but it was VERY sticky!!  My advice to anyone would be to grease everything that will touch the fondant with Crisco - a lot of Crisco!  So I made my fondant, baked a square cake and decided to cover it with my fondant. 

I colored my fondant green.  It came out kind of tye dyed because my fondant wasn't warm enough when I was mixing the color in (I think?!)  When I colored more fondant blue I made sure the fondant was warmer and it was much easier to color.  But I think the tye dye looked pretty cool.

Carrot Cake Cupcakes!

I love reading other blogs about wonderful sweet creations.  One of my favorites is Sweetopia,    http://sweetopia.net/  .  A few weeks ago she did Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting.  So I decided to try it.  It was the first time I have made cupcakes from scratch.  I think they came out well and everyone loved them!  Here is a link to her recipe:

http://sweetopia.net/2011/08/carrot-cake-cupcakes-with-cream-cheese-icing/

The hardest (or most time consuming part) was grating the carrots.  Remember if you want your sweets to taste great you need to use good quality fresh ingredients.  They smelled so good in the oven!  They were delicious.  You should try them!

Here is a picture of Alex's cupcake when he was done with it.