Moose Ka Ka

I'm back home from a two week trip to Germany and Greece! The trip was full of great sights, night life, and food of course. The most well known Greek cuisine, Moussaka (pronounced moo-sah-KAH), or "Moose Ka Ka" according to 'my big fat greek wedding', inspired me to make these moose-alicious cupcakes.

Though I doubt any of you will be in need of moose cupcakes any time soon, I will explain the process of making them anyway. The moose snout is made out of a twinkie, which are surprisingly hard to find these days. I used weight watchers' mock twinkies instead (only 100 calories.. maybe it was a better choice anyway). Before you secure the twinkie to the cupcake you must cut off the lower corner at an angle so that the end of the twinkie fits well with the flat top of the cupcake. I secured the twinkie with a pretzel stick and icing, which was very nerve wracking. The cupcakes are pretty top heavy and seem to be ready to fall apart at any minute. The whole cupcake is then to be dipped into a large cup of dark chocolate melting wafters.. this was a disaster. After two failed attempts I decided to spoon the melting chocolate on the cupcake which was far more successful.

While the structure was still drying, I stuck on the antlers (which were traced on a hand drawn stencil with dark chocolate melting wafers), molded Tootsie Roll ears, mini M&M eyes, and chocolate covered sunflower seed nostrils. Finally, I iced on the hair, mouth, and beard. I was pleased to find that once the chocolate dries, the cupcakes become much sturdier.

The cupcakes were chocolately and delicious! I had a great time making the impractical creation.

Strawberry Shortcake

Anxious to try out my new Hummingbird Bakery cook book, I decided to make these strawberry shortcake cupcakes.These not-too-sweet treats are topped with cream cheese frosting and graham cracker crumbs. The recipe called for freshly chopped strawberries to be placed at the bottom of each cupcake liner. Unfortunately, they came out a little soggy on the bottom, so next time I'll mix the strawberries into the batter instead. Nevertheless, they were delicious!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

These festive cupcakes were a blast to make, and even left us with lots of leftover candy, yum! I highly recommend making these cupcakes because they are so cute and very easy to make! If you can successfully dip a cupcake in sugar, you'll be a pro.

The christmas bulbs were rolled in different color sugars, and then decorated with licorice laces, mini M&Ms, Fruit by the Foot, and Airheads. Let your creative juices run wild! The tops are yellow Dots that are secured to the cupcake with pretzel sticks. The loops are black licorice. Cut a slit into the top of the Dot and the black licorice should slide right in.

The string of lights have a carved graham cracker base to give it the bulb shape. The graham cracker is then iced, and secured onto the lightly iced cupcake and rolled in different color sugars. These were the instructions, but because I know EVERYTHING (just kidding), I discarded the directions and dipped the iced graham crackers first and secured them to the cupcake with icing after.. well, surprisingly (haha) following the instructions would have given a better result. The sides of the graham cracker and the small piece of cupcake showing were not coated in sugar, and made it look a little sloppy. Next time I will follow the directions.

As for the graham crackers, I was surprised at how easy they were to cut; hardly any cookie crumbling! A serrated knife got the job done. The tops of the lights are green Dots secured  with pretzel sticks, and the light cords are green licorice laces (which were difficult to find, but I picked them up at a specialty candy store). I had no problem inserting the green laces into the tops once I had cut a small slit in the side of the Dot. The plug is a black licorice square and two Tic-Tacs.

I also recieved the "Hello, Cupcake" sequel, "What's New Cupcake" for Christmas! Thanks Mom and Dad :]. I'm VERY excited to try these new designs. The book is full of impractical cupcakes that are absolutely hilarious.
My wonderful sister Sam also gave me a "Hummingbird Bakery" baking book for my birthday! Its filled with delicious looking baked goods. SO, in addition to disguising my cupcakes with decorations, I am planning on experimenting with more elegant and sophisticated recipes. How exciting!

Enjoy the rest of your Christmas!

Build Ups and Break Downs

Happy Belated Fall!


I made this cake for my grandfather's birthday, which we celebrated with a house full of people during thanksgiving break. This was my first cake that was designed and decorated without a book to follow. It was also the first double layered cake I've ever made.. and the first time I've ever used fondant. That being said, it brought on the challenges, the stress, and yes, the tears. In addition, take note that a kitchen crammed with 13 relatives is not the ideal location for cake decorating.


The adventure began with the making of autumn leaves. I bought fake leaves from Michaels and coated them with brown, red, and orange melting chocolates (coating with your fingers works just fine). I let them harden in the fridge and then carefully peeled off the fake leaves. If trying at home, be sure to get fake leaves with veins, or else the chocolate leaves will have no texture. The leaves have about a 50% success rate, the other half cracked or broke while being peeled. Next it was time to make the acorns. These were made from caramels which I molded into an acorn shape. Each caramel was then dunked into chocolate sprinkles to make the acorn caps.

At this point, I figured the hard part was over.. the decorations looked great. All I had to do now was bake the cake and ice it. Easy peasy right? HAH. It was perhaps this over confident mindset that unleashed the wave of disasters.


I bought 2 six inch round pans to bake the top layer of the cake, and decided that I would simply guess the baking time for them.. needless to say, they came out half raw. Whoops! Good thing cake batter is so tasty! Then came the icing and filling of the cake. I made my own buttercream because it's my family's favorite frosting. And though it was delicious, I will never EVER use this buttercream to frost a cake again. The cakes were sliding all over the place due to the extremely high temperatures radiating from the 13 bodies that were circling the kitchen. The frosting also wasn't strong enough to hold in the filling (which I had poured a little too generously), causing the blood red raspberry filling to seep everywhere. Finally, the buttercream hardened far too quickly to decorate properly. To fix all of the cake flaws, I coated the cake with as much frosting as I could slap on to it. In the end, the cake looked like was a big mound of icing.

In addition, while attempting to ice the cake it came to my attention that the cupcakes I was baking had been in the oven for a good 45 minutes. So much for multi-tasking! I guess the burning stench coming from the oven was masked by my tears of frustration about the icing failure. Oopsies. I'm just glad I didnt set the house on fire.

Lastly, I molded dark brown fondant into branches, and placed them on the mound of frosting that made up the cake. I finished decorating and fixed up the cake as best I could.

In conclusion, here is what I have learned from this baking disaster:
1. Do not decorate a cake in a small house packed with 13 people.
2. Do not try more than 2 new skills on any one cake.
3. No matter how much you enjoy raspberry filling, do not over-fill a cake.
4. Do not cry over a cake, because in the end.. it's just a cake.


Hope you can all learn from my failure! I know I sure did, haha. And happy belated fall! I hope it was a good one.

Starry Night

In an attempt to take my mind off of my freshly pulled wisdom teeth, I made these cupcakes while trapped at home with chipmunk cheeks. A fantasy football draft was going on at my Aunt and Uncle's house, so even though I couldn't gnaw these babies down, I knew they would be eaten by the big, burly, football lovin' men.

I decorated the cupcakes to look like Van Gogh's Starry Night. I know that this might not have been the best choice to make for a room full of manly football lovers, but it took the least precision which I needed in my slightly loopy condition. This is another creation from "Hello, Cupcake".

To make the cupcakes I had to place wafer cookies between the gaps of the cupcakes so that the frosting could be iced on smoothly. Then I dyed the frosting, which was much more difficult than I thought it would be; the cupcakes require NINE different piping bags. The worst part was that the frosting had to be different shades of the same color.. very challenging with only one shade of dye. So instead of wasting nine piping bags, I used plastic baggies instead. They worked well for the most part, just a little messy. "Hello, Cupcake" recomended that I add a frame to put around the cupcakes, which I thought was a little silly, but it did actually make the whole ensemble look more put together.



In other news, I am currently back at school! Being that I, unfortunately, do not have an oven in my dorm room, the next cake creation can be expected around Thanksgiving. But I've been having a great time at school. The only negative thing I can say about this year so far is that I have failed to achieve my goal of graduating without dropping a tray of food in the cafeteria. Last week at breakfast I was attempting to hold my tray and squirt ketchup on my hash browns at the same time. Needless to say, my tray (with 3 plates on it) slipped and fell to the floor with the loudest crash I have ever heard. The plates broke and the food splattered all over myself and the floor. Worst of all, the ketchup dispenser is right in the front of the caf. with every table facing it. The entire cafeteria went silent for a second before the traditional round of applause broke out. I must say I was very humble as I laughed, raised my hand and took a bow. All I can guarantee is that this will be a ketchup free semester from here on out.

Happy Birthday Momma

August 29th was my Mom's birthday, which gave me a great excuse to make another cake. I was feeling adventurous and indicisive about how to design it so I decided to make a cake with various colors and flowers for a wildflower look. This project ended up being a very time consuming one (as you can imagine), but the finished product was worth it. Looking back, I probably should have made the flowers a day before to break up the work and also to let them dry completely. When I was putting them on the cake the larger flowers were still soft so some were difficult to pull off the wax paper (where I piped them) and some even broke. Lesson learned!

I am a huge fan of fruit filling, if you havent figured that out yet. I find it's a great way to avoid the problem of having the cake be too sweet. So I experimented with the frozen fruit I had in my freezer that day and settled on a peach and strawberry filling. The tangyness complimented the sweetness of the sugary frosting very well but I still have to find a way to make the fruit flavors more prominent. It was still delicious!

I stuck with the basketweaved sides for this cake, but for my next one I'm dying to try out this same pattern but piped with multiple tips to give it a different kind of look. I bordered the cake with a simple shell border. Because the flowers took so long to make, I refused to make the frosting from scratch. So I bought Pillsbury frosting to ice it instead. It ended up being soft and runny so I had to put the piping bag in the freezer every 5 minutes or so to keep the basketweave from melting off the cake. Other than that small issue this cake turned out great!

Daffodils

Once I was home for the summer, I decided to take a real Wiltons Cake Decorating class at my local Michaels craft store. The class I took was called "Flowers and Gum Paste", which taught you (can you guess?)how to make different types of flowers out of icing and gum paste. It was SUCH a helpful class and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in cake decorating. The class only had about 10 people in it (all middle aged women of course) which allowed for personal instructions and attention.

Throughout the class we were ultimately working toward our final cake which we were to decorate during the last class. The final cake was to be created and designed by ourselves, so I was torn between making a cake with roses or a cake with daffodils, but finally decided on the daffodils only because its something that you do not see everyday.

The daffodil petals are piped with a specific tip. Once the petals have been piped the tips must be pinched by flour powdered fingers. After the base has been made the tubular center is piped by circling icing upward, "as high as you dare" according to my instructor. The final touch is to squiggle icing around the top of the tube.

The side of the cake is a basket weave pattern which is nice on the eyes texturally and also is great because it hides any imperfections. I learned from this cake to always start the basket weave from the BOTTOM. Not the top. This is because the bottom of the cake is the closest you will come to having a straight line to follow, while the top of the cake is sometime slanted. Its so simple but will make your life so much easier.

The border of the cake is a "reverse shell" (the direction of the shells alternate), which I am torn about. I think that it looks cool and unique to someone studying it, but a little sloppy at a quick glance.

In the end I absolutely loved this cake. I thought it had the perfect balance of color, elegance and texture. I would make it again in a heartbeat.