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.

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!

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.