Sweet Celebrations

bridal cupcakes

We had a bridal shower for a special lady at church a couple of weeks ago.  I had read about and seen so many pictures of beautiful cupcake stands and I saw the shower as a perfect opportunity to try one out. 

First I had to make the stand.  If you google cupcake stands you can find lots of instructions, but here's a site to get started.  I did it basically like this, but in between each tier, I used a glass container full of decorative glass balls to match.  Here is the finished cupcake stand.

Now for the cupcakes.  As you can see I went with the colors pink, blue and chocolate brown.  I made some yellow cupcakes and some chocolate cupcakes with delicious chocolate chips inside.  The icing was an assortment of chocolate buttercream and white buttercream (colored pink of course).  To finish them off I  made little flowers out of fondant.  

These were so much fun and I loved how it turned out! 

Now I'm off to work on this beautiful lady's wedding cake (gasp)!  Wish me luck and look for pictures next week.  Have a great weekend! 

mini cherry cheese cakes

This was a recipe I came up with during the summer.  I wanted to do something mini and cute and cheese cake sounded good so I used a shortbread crust recipe I had, baked the tiny crusts in a muffin pan and used Eagle Brand's Cherry Cheese Pie recipe for the filling.  I love the Eagle Brand recipe so I knew it couldn't be anything but good.  I was correct!

 
Shortbread Crust
2/3 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup white sugar
11/4 cups all purpose flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  In a medium bowl, mix all ingredients together until evenly crumbly.  Press into a 9 inch square pan.  I doubled the recipe and made an 8 inch square pan and almost 12 (I think) mini crusts by pressing the dough into the muffin pan.  Bake for 20 minutes or until lightly brown around the edges.

Cheese Pie
1 (8 ounce) cream cheese, softened
1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated milk
1/3 cup lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extract

In large bowl, beat cream cheese until fluffy.  Gradually beat in condensed mild until smooth.  Stir in lemon juice and extract.  Pour into cooled shortbread crusts.  Chill 4 hours or until set.

Now you can top with cherry pie filling for a yummy and pretty finish.

 
Very good.  It satisfies all your cream cheese with cherries on top cravings.  A little chocolate somewhere in there and it would have been perfect.  :-)  Let me know if you try it out and what you think.

  

hairstylist

My hairstylist asked me to do a cake for one of the lady's in her salon who passed her board exam.  I'm not sure if that's exactly what you call it, but she's now a certified hairstylist anyway.  So the ladies at the salon wanted to celebrate with her.  This is the cake I came up with.

The cake was yellow with cream cheese filling and buttercream icing.  The hairdryer was made out of rice krispy treats and covered with fondant.  All the other decorations were fondant.

  

princess

I think this is my first princess cake, if I remember correctly.  I know it was my first sugar crown.  The crown was made of marshmallow fondant as were all the other decorations.

The whole girly princess theme was fun for me especially since I live in the land of frogs, snails and puppy dog tails.

And guns.  Can't forget the toy guns.  :-)

 

This cake was for Princess Lainey, a beautiful little lady who happens to be our friend so we went to the party, had fun and ate cake.  One of the tiers was yellow cake with buttercream filling and the other tier was chocolate cake with cream cheese filling.  It was covered with marshmallow fondant.

Can you find one of my princes in this picture?  He snuck in after I repeatedly said, "Get out of the picture."  He's a sneaky little lover of frogs, snails and puppy dog tails!  And toy guns!

chocolate chip pumpkin bread

It's that time of year when baking is an absolute must at our house.  It's not so great for the figure, but oh so much fun!  Today's What's Baking recipe is as Fall as it gets.  It's pumpkin bread with a little surprise inside, chocolate chips.  Yummy!  So on to the recipe.

 
3 cups white sugar
1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
1 cup vegetable oil 
2/3 cup water
4 eggs
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tbsp cinnamon
2 tsp ground nutmeg
2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease and flour three 9x5 inch loaf pans.  ( I halved the recipe and used 1 9x5 loaf pan and one that was a little smaller.)  In a large bowl, combine sugar, pumpkin, oil, water, vanilla and eggs.  Beat until smooth.  Blend in flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda and salt.  Fold in chocolate chips. Pour into prepared pans and bake for 1 hour (It took mine about 45 minutes.) or until an inserted knife comes out clean.  Cool on wire racks.  Slice it up, smother with a little butter and enjoy!

 
In my opinion this bread was very good.  I give it a 4.5 out of 5.  However, don't do what I did and put in a tablespoon of nutmeg instead of a teaspoon.  It was a little too "nutmeggy" for me, but I'm sure if added appropriately would have been just right. 

I've been around my sister too long.  She can't follow a recipe to save her life.  Sometimes that works out well for her and she comes up with something delicious.  Then sometimes not so much, like when she thinks the recipe said bake for 10 minutes when it really said cool for 10 minutes.  Needless to say, that cheesy jalapeno bread was raw dough.