Malted Chocolate Mini's

These little triple chocolate mini cupcakes came out looking so cute and SO chocolaty! Again, they were the triple chocolate cake and thick chocolate ganache frosting (more like fudge) with a malted milk ball on top.

Triple Dipped Chocolate Mini's

Yummm, my heaven! The cake is triple chocolate (chocolate cake with cocoa and chocolate chips), and the frosting is a thick chocolate ganache dipped three times. Sprinkled on top is pink sugar for valentine's day of course!

More Mint Chocolate

Another version of the mint chocolate mini's. Did a swirl of buttercream on these with some crushed peppermints on top.

Pink Lemon Drops

Lemon cake with pink lemon fondant glaze. Very dainty and girly. Next time I do these I will add three little white flowers to each one.

Peppermint Cuppies

Mint Chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream and white jimmies.

Pink Swirls

Classic white cake with pick buttercream frosting. Chocoholic that I am, it is quite amazing that these were my absolute favorite out of all of them! Just simple and perfect.

Cupcakes for CMM's Valentine's Candle Light Party

My boss asked me to make 9 dozen mini cupcakes for the Valentine's party on Saturday. I made a whole bunch so I'll post pictures of them all then tell you about the different kinds. They turned out super cute! I absolutely love making cupcakes. They behave very nicely ;)

Spring/Valentine Cookies for KD's design firms.

Brandon's Mom, Kim, asked if I could make 9 dozen sugar cookies for her to give to her design firms for a little valentine gift. While I love sugar cookies hopefully these are the last for a little while...so many!! I have to get a picture of how she packaged them up on here. Apparently it was very cute!

More Cookies...

Cookies!

I tried out a new sugar cookie recipe this weekend and it ended making so many cookies! I tried out some royal icing recipes and techniques and in general they came out nicely and tasted very good! The icing set perfectly making them easy to pack or store or ship or whatever. Very fun.

Hot Rod ("Rat Rod") Cake

My first car cake... And first real cake order! It was for a man's 30th Birthday cake. I think it turned out well considering. It is white almond sour cream cake with vanilla buttercream and homemade marshmallow fondant.

Sugar Cookie Fun

I've been wanting to try the "flooding method" for icing sugar cookies for a long time. It just seemed easier and cleaner to me... piping a stiffer frosting on the outline of the cookies first, then filling them in with a thinned version of icing. That's how I did all the snowflakes. Easier said than done. Brandon, Nick and my Dad can attest to the mess it actually made in the kitchen. We had some "flooding" problems... like overflowing! Anyway, it was easier to do my old method just using a knife hence the mittens (all left hands sadly haha) were all done just with a knife. No flooding involved.

I made some gingerbread men with the leftover dough from my house. I made a skeleton man per Brandon's request haha. I'm not sure if you can tell but they're googly eyes are all goofy.

My Best Gingerbread House Ever!

I finally got to make my own gingerbread house this year. Don't get me wrong, I've LOVED, loved, loved making them from the pampered chef stone mold my mom has used for the longest time, I just wanted something bigger and different this year for my house. And I really wanted to try making the stained glass candy sugar windows (which worked beautifully!). Thanks Nick for helping me with that. It was alot more difficult to roll out and cut the dough myself than I had thought it would be. It was thin and cracked easily and was hard to roll out big enough. Cutting through the dough would distort the shape (which would be so important to the integrity of the structure come building time...). But I made it work. I had to make 2 huge recipes to squeeze in all that I wanted to do. The Necco wafer roof was a nightmare because all the Necco's came out of their package broken! Thanks to my Mom who helped me pick all of the good ones out. I used chiclets as little lights around the house, and lots of cut up candy canes. The wreaths are M&M's and the tree is an ice cream cone!! The walkway is nerds (idea courtesy of the gingerbread houses Brandon and I saw in PPG place when we went ice skating one night. Anyway, anyone in Pittsburgh should go check out all those houses. School kids made them all from around the area and they are really fun to look at and get ideas from if your into the whole gingerbread thing!). But anyway I'll post the recipe for the gingerbread and icing incase anyone wants to try it.

Sammy's 8th Birthday Cake

Brandon and I drove home one weekend in September to visit my family, swim with the sharks, and be there for Sam's birthday party. He requested this "Lionfish" cake (strange request for a 7 year old, don't you think?) haha but it turned out well. He like it, anyway! He just found a book with a picture of it and I rough copied it in icing on the cake. Yumm!

Cake with blueberry filling for Mom and Dad's Anniversary <3

I made this cake over the summer for Mom and Dad's anniversary <3 The blueberry filling was an experiment but the whole thing was really delicious. The big round flat sprinkles were a nice fun touch too. And for once I made vanilla cake instead of chocolate and actually liked it! Love you Mom and Dad!

Cakes for Amy's 21st!

These were really fun for me to make. I used the premade fondant for the first time and it was surprisingly easy to use. Brandon helped me dye the pink and green ribbons :) Everyone really liked them, the cake and frosting were really moist and tasty. I had originally planned to cover the whole little cake in fondant on all sides but I didn't think I'd have enough to cover all the cakes and the ribbons themselves took so long that I abandoned that idea and just did the bows on top. I'll have to try real, covered, mini cakes some other time, with a more dense cake recipe that isn't as sticky or hard to handle.

Cupcakes!!!

One of my favorite things to make and experiment with is cupcakes! I love how you can make all different kinds very easily with just one batter variation and one frosting variation. They keep forever and are easier to serve and eat as individual treats than cutting a cake. These were for Sammy's Spring Fair at New Eagle Elementary School. Chocolate cake (as always!) and then 3 types of icing. The flower ones are a dark chocolate thick ganache that is FANTASTIC, by far the best topping I have used. Then the ones with green swirls are a peanut butter buttercream. Each of those cupcakes has a cake tube cut out of it, then the filling piped into the channel, and the cake replaced and pressed down into them again. This way the frosting goes all the way through and you're not stuck with the good stuff on top and the boring cake at the bottom! The white topped ones are good old plain vanilla buttercream with red sprinkles. Some of these white ones got a little fondant flower and piped green leaf just for a change in pace. Very cute! I'll have to make a confession here... these were so good that they never actually made it to the Fair! My family wanted to keep them too badly and eat them all up! (which is exactly what we did in about 1 day).

One of the Family Traditional Favorites

This dessert is always the first request from my brother's and I for special occasions. This is one dessert I'll have to give alot of credit to my mom on. I have never tried to make it by myself, but I am going to try it as individual puffs next time. It's alot of work to make, but it is so delicious and the leftovers (when there are any) get even better in the refrigerator overnight! The shell is a light pastry dough arranged in a ring before it bakes. This way, it bakes up into a ring of connected big round puffs that are really attractive on a nice round tray. We pull out the extra inside dough so there is plenty of room for the custard that goes inside. Then we drizzle the top liberally with a thick chocolate sauce. It's so good! I'm all excited thinking about it now haha.

Welcome home/ late birthday cake for Lj

I made this little double layer cake for Lauren. It's chocolate cake with buttercream frosting and MMF on top (of course). That's pretty standard by now. I had fun playing with the piping decoration on this one. It was very simple but possibly the tastiest actual cake I have made.