Publicity!

I know that it has been quite a while since I've posted- the economy has struck and my expert cupcake taster/boyfriend was laid off this spring. As a result, we've moved to a place where kitchen access is pretty limited (aka home) and my baking has suffered. I have some pictures and posts saved up that I will eventually get around to in the next few weeks.

In other news- my pirate cake that I made for my friend Aston's birthday was featured on Cake Wrecks- as a Sunday sweet! Here's the link!

Shiver me timbers..

Pirate Birthday Cake

I've been MIA for a while now- I work retail in real life and between the Holiday season and the struggling economy, work had been busy. I have had several commissions over the past few months, however we suffered a broken camera and therfore were unable to document much. Well, a new season is upon us and we are armed with a fancy new camera and plenty of fancy new ideas!

This my first attempt at a tiered cake. My friend Ashley commissioned this for her boyfriend's birthday. The top tier is a dark chocolate cake with a rich mocha filling, while the bottom was a vanilla bean cake with a vanilla buttercream filling. It is covered in fondant that I colored and 'weathered' with food coloring. I painted all the map detail on by hand and laid it in brown sugar 'sand'. No pirate cake would be complete without booty- it is surrounded with multi-colored sugar jewels and pearls along with edible gold dubloons.

I'm really thrilled with the way that this came out and am looking forward to having more fun with specific themes!

Antique-cakes!

More fun with frosting! When I open my own bakeshop one day, I hope to have a very victorian/ shabby chic decor, and this photo couldn't capture that vision more! The original cupcake was white cake with bright yellow buttercream frosting topped with pink sprinkles. My executive cupcake taster Nick did this photo for me- enjoy!

Wedding Cupcakes

For my friend's wedding. Vanilla bean cupcakes with chocolate mousse filling topped with vanilla bean buttercream- so so good, tasted like vanilla ice cream. Embellished with a fondant monogram (N and D for Nilufer and Dave) and daisy.

If anyone is thinking about whether to go with cupcakes rather than a traditional wedding cake, I say cupcakes all the way! These looked so good and inviting next to the hacked up white wedding cake- I'll upload pics for comparison. At the end of the night, there were lots of neglected slices of cake, but not one of my cupcakes in sight!

Blue Spikes with Pink Sugar

Some fun with frosting! I made these a few months ago while housesitting and am just getting them up now. These are yellow cake with basic buttercream, decorated in a not-so-basic way.
I love how the pink sugar just bounces off this blue frosting, and with a cupcake like this, no ordinary baking cup will do- so I give you zebra stripes! Stay tuned for more fun with frosting later this week!

na na na na na na....Batman!!!

I've been pretty busy making cupcakes for a friend's wedding on Friday, but I couldn't resist whipping up this batch of Batman cupcakes for the Dark Knight premier. Devils food cake topped with chocolate buttercream and a classic Batman symbol made from yellow fondant. If I had to do it again, there's a few things I'd change- but considering I made these in under 2 hours on a whim, I'm pretty happy with the final result.

Pink Lemonade!

It's been pretty hot up here in Boston, so I wanted my next baking project to be something refreshing for summer. I found it in my pink lemonade cupcake- a light pink cake with a subtle lemonade flavor (achieved by using pink lemonade concentrate in the batter) topped with a tart lemonade buttercream and a royal icing pink 'lemon slice' that I made myself.

Legend has it that pink lemonade has its origins in the circus. It is said that 14-year old Henry "Bunk" Allot stumbled into success when some red cinnamon candies fell into a tub of lemonade he was mixing to sell at a circus concession stand. The resulting pink mixture sold so well compared to it's yellow counterpart that it quickly became a staple of the circus experience. The first print reference to pink lemonade made in 1879 refers to the circus as well, adding more fuel to this legend.

Recipes for pink lemonade date back to 1863, calling for currant juice or strawberries to be added, resulting in 'pretty color and pleasing flavor, a very good drink for summer or for evening parties'