Wilton Course 2 Final Project

I just finished course 2 of the Wilton Classes at our local Michaels store. Our final project used our royal icing flowers and color flow bird that we created in previous classes along with a basket weave and rope border. I was a little unsure about my flowers over the past few weeks, but I was happy with how it all came together. The cake is a cherry vanilla cake with vanilla pudding  filling. The frosting is the Wilton Class buttercream recipe, which is not my favorite. It is made with shortening to keep the bright white color, and I have trouble with it coming out very dry. I prefer the taste of buttercream made with real butter. I guess everything really is better with butter!

Wedding cake & cupcakes

My friends Mayanne & Casey were married June 28, 2008 in beautiful Lake Tahoe, and they asked me to do cupcakes for the event. I was very excited and nervous about the task, but I am really happy with the result. The cupcake flavors were chocolate, kahlua, and white chocolate. They were filled with vanilla and chocolate pudding and frosted with vanilla and white chocolate buttercream. The top tier was white chocolate cake with chocolate filling and vanilla buttercream. The flowers on both the cupcakes and top cake were fondant daisies painted with luster dust and made to match the colors of the invitations. I found the cupcake stand at a local shop called the Candy Connection, and we added the blue ribbon to coordinate with the couple's colors. 

The reception was held at the Picchetti Winery, and was beautiful. The only cake related issues we faced were the pollen from the pine trees and the warm weather. 

S'Mores Cupcakes!

My husband and I have been camping quite a bit lately, and so I have been eating quite a few s'mores. This got me to thinking that a s'mores cupcake would be super yummy. So... I did some searching on other blogs and found a couple of recipes that I combined to create these. 

I saw the idea for the chocolate cupcakes with marshmallow icing at Sew Darn Cute  and I saw the idea to have a graham cracker bottom with graham cracker cake, chocolate frosting, and marshmallow filling at Cupcake Bake Shop I decided that I would like to try a chocolate cupcake with graham cracker bottom and marshmallow frosting.

First, I crushed 6 graham crackers in my food processor and stirred in 1/2 stick of melted butter. I then spooned teaspoonfuls of this mixture into the cupcake liners. This made enough for 2 dozen cupcakes. However, the batter and frosting made 3 dozen cupcakes so I had to crush a few more graham crackers. Here is what a filled liner looked like.

The chocolate cupcake recipe I used was Martha Stewart's one bowl chocolate cupcakes. The recipe says to fill the liners 1/3 full, but I found that they needed to have more batter (approx. 1/2 full).  Here was the finished result after I topped them with the marshmallow frosting. YUMMY!

Strawberry cupcakes with chocolate hearts

My husband had a church meeting/potluck that I was invited to. So... looking for any excuse to bake cupcakes, I made these yummy strawberry cupcakes. I found the recipe on Martha Stewart's website, although the recipe is from Sprinkles bakery. I love the fact that both the cake and icing recipe use pureed fresh strawberries. The berries have looked so wonderful at our grocery stores and farmers markets!!! 

The cake baked up very nicely and had a wonderful light texture with a great flavor. I whipped the frosting more than the recipe suggested since I wanted an airy frosting that I could put the chocolate decoration into. I found the heart pattern in the word clipart directory. I experimented using the Wilton candy squeeze bottles instead of pastry bags for the hearts. I would not recommend it since I kept getting splotches of air in the chocolate (a problem that I have not had with disposable plastic bags). However, the melting of the chocolate was quite simple in the bottles. I just boiled water in a saucepan, let it cool some, and added the squeeze bottles to the water. I kneaded the bottles and that was enough to produce nicely melted chocolate. I am sure they work much better for filling molds than they did for piping freehand

.

Lemon Raspberry Cupcakes

A coworker of mine turned 30, so I decided to make lemon-raspberry cupcakes for the office. I saw this recipe in bon appetit and have been waiting for an occasion to use it. I love the flavor combination of lemon and raspberries, and any recipe that I get to use my microplane is great.

This recipe involves layering a lemon batter with seedless raspberry jam.

As the cupcakes bake, the raspberry jam creates a swirl effect in the cupcake. I had some problem with the jam sinking to the bottom of the muffin cup. So, I think next time I will add more batter at the bottom of the cup before adding the jam.

The icing was made using lemon juice, lemon zest, and powdered sugar. Half of the cupcakes had this icing, and I added raspberry jam to the other half to make them pink. After they were iced, they were each topped with a fresh raspberry.

Bridal Shower

I completed my first bridal shower cakes for a friends shower. I did a wedding dress cake and 2 bridesmaid dress cakes in the brides colors. I used Wilton's wonder mold and mini wonder molds.

They were chocolate chip pound cake with vanilla buttercream filling and lemon ginger pound cake with lemon mousse and raspberry filling. I was really happy with how they turned out (and how they tasted)!