Sunday, February 20, 2011

Crackin' Up



It's a little early for April Fools, but I couldn't resist making these hilarious cupcakes! This is a recipe from my new book "What's New Cupcake". My mom brought the final product to a meeting she had that day and people were actually perplexed as to why she brought eggs to snack on.


I used cute mini cupcakes so that they would fit into the egg carton. I find mini cupcakes the perfect snacking size. You can just pop them right into your mouth for a little bite of dessert. I rummaged around in my basement for Easter eggs and collected the bottoms of them. I rubbed the insides with vegetable oil and then coated them with vanilla chocolate melting wafers. I layed the eggs dome-side up on wax paper and stuck them in the fridge for 5 minutes. When I took them out, I rubbed them with another layer of vanilla chocolate melting wafers and stuck them back in the fridge for another 5 minutes.


Next I made the yolks by mixing 1/2 cup of lemon curd with one drop of red and three drops of yellow food coloring. I put it into a baggy and snipped a corner for later use.




When the eggs were done in the fridge, I pulled them out of the Easter egg shells. I was expecting this to be much more difficult than it actually was- only a couple of the eggs broke, and I kept the pieces for decorating later.


I iced the cupcakes with vanilla frosting and iced the lemon curd on each cupcake from the baggy. I then put the cupcakes in the egg carton and placed the vanilla egg shells on top of all but four cupcakes. I stuck the broken egg shells around the bare cupcakes to create the effect of broken eggs.








The cupcakes came out great and much more realistic than I would have guessed. I loved that the yolks were a little surprise waiting underneath the egg shells. They were one of my favorite creations to eat too! The bite-sized desserts had the perfect balance of white chocolate and lemon flavor.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

The Bees Knees


Hello my honeybees! Its a snowy mess outside but I'm so eager for Spring! Can you tell? These cupcakes gave me the proper dose of Spring that I needed.

The yellow honeycombs are sugar cookies brushed with light Karo syrup and then dipped in yellow decorating sugar. I made a cookie stencil out of cardboard and then traced the stencil onto the cookie dough for the honeycomb shape. I iced the cupcakes with vanilla frosting and placed the cookies on top.



The bees were supposed to be made out of giant black jelly beans (if you can find me a bag of giant black jelly beans.. let me know), but I used old fashion thick black licorice instead. I used frosting to secure the bees onto the cookies and then I iced on the bees' heads, stingers, and stripes. While carefully icing on a stinger, my black icing bag exploded. Whoops! I cleaned it up the best I could and strategically hid the mess amidst the other honeycombs.



Finally, I delicately placed on the sliced almond wings. Tada!


The cupcakes came out super cute. And hey, if there are any spelling bee champs out there that want to celebrate, give me a call!