Mummy's the Word

Halloween is just around the corner, so I decided to post some photos of my mummy cupcakes I made..last year. That's right folks, since I've been a slacker for over a year, I'm posting stuff that never made it to my blog since I've been gone. So, these are them!! Kinda cute, huh? They were really simple to make! I got the idea from...I think it was from a Family Fun magazine.





I baked butter yellow cupcakes and iced them in chocolate tub frosting. I made a little mound in the middle for the nose, and used red and blue gel icing for the eyes. I then went over the face with white tub frosting and a # 47 tip, leaving space for the eyes and mouth.

This year I'm going to have a hard time topping these. I'm sure I'll be making cookies, but will they be as simple or as cute?? Who knows!! I'm very VERY excited for upcoming holiday baking in store!!!

Oh, and I have to mention- As always, my mom staged the cupcakes. Didn't she do a fabulous job?? She always thinks of clever ways to stage my goodies, and the pictures always turn out great. Thanks, Mom!!

Under the Sea 20th Anniversary Cake

This past July (really delayed post, I know) was my parents' 20th wedding anniversary. My mom had wanted to plan this nice vow renewal ceremony on the beach and invite friends and family...but with my dad having been out of a job it was out of the question. I felt really bad, this was something she's been wanting to plan for years. So I had an idea one day. What if we (my sister and I) made them a cake similar to what she had talked about me making them for their ceremony? So we planned it out...the hard part was decorating it on the sly.

We baked a double layer marble hexagon cake at home (about time I got some use out of those hexagon baking pans I got FOREVER ago), bought a bucket of light blue buttercream from Sam's, bought some graham cracker crumbs and several other decorating components, and we did this ALL ON THE SLY. This cake HAD to be a surprise. Luckily, my aunt was willing to assist us in our mission, and let us use her kitchen to decorate our cake. =) My 6-year-old cousin Alyssa liked helping us put the pearl dust on our white chocolate shells, and watched us the whole time as we decorated.

The decorations were pretty easy. We pressed some graham cracker crumbs onto the sides and top of the cake, and piped the seaweed with green Wilton icing and the bubbles with white, adhered the shells with icing, and added little pearl sprinkles (I thought they were so cute!). It turned out great, and we had a lot of fun making it. And we did get the surprise factor we were looking for-we even got tears! What a great way to celebrate 20 years- and here's to many more!

Marbled Birthday Cookies

Last week, my mom asked me to do some spur of the moment cookies for a friend's birthday, and I happily agreed, especially when she suggested I make these cookies. We saw these on a new blog I discovered called Sweetopia, and they were so pretty, I had to try them! They actually were easier than I expected, AND they turned out a lot better than I expected, too!
I learned a few things from making these cookies:
1. Cutting the recipe I usually use doesn't turn out so great. You have to make adjustments otherwise the dough is too dry..Like crumbs-that-won't-stick-together too dry.
2. Adding a bit more corn syrup than called for in my icing recipe made the icing REALLY shiny. Well...more shiny than it's been with my other cookies. I loved the look of these ones.
And Finally,
3. Make extra cookies. You don't know what little fingers are going to find their way into your wet icing...or how many people you know are going to say "where's mine?" when they see your pictures (I only make SO MANY extras, guys, sorry).


All packaged and ready to be delivered!! What do you think?? Not bad for spur of the moment, huh?

Birthday Butterflies

These are my first butterfly cookies. I made them for my best friend Shannon's birthday, since pink and green is one of her favorite color combinations. THESE are what I made the cake to match! What do you think? This was my first time with marbling effect, and I think it turned out OK...not bad for my first time at least.
I also did the same cookies in purple and green for a friend at work (I am TOTALLY down for killing two birds with one stone). For some reason I think the purple ones turned out better...probably because I did the pink ones first, so had enough practice by the time I got to the purple ones? Who knows. I just read somewhere that when decorating, if you wait for the border to dry you'll see it in the finished product, but if you fill the cookie right away, it blends with the border and looks A LOT nicer! Who knew!

Have I mentioned that I can't wait to do some holiday baking?? Because I can't. Be ready, because in the next couple weeks I'll start having Halloween goodies!

Shannon's the big 2-0!

Last Thursday was my best friend Shannon's birthday, so I wanted to do something special for her. I know her favorite kind of cake is yellow cake with chocolate frosting, so while at work I decided to whip something up for her (so YES, technically this is a Sam's Club cake). Her favorite color is lime green...well we don't have lime green frosting, but our light green is just as pretty... and "pink goes good with green".
So, I made light pink roses and decided to do something we don't do at Sam's- a rope border. We weren't even trained to do it...I knew those Wilton cake decorating classes I took a couple years ago would come in handy. =) Look at that rose on the left...that's probably my best one to date actually. I'm quite proud of this cake if I do say so myself...a little extra effort goes a long way. I actually picked the colors of the cake to match other goodies I made for her...those will be revealed soon!