Koi Fish

These koi fish are definitely one of my favorite creations. They're so cute and weird looking. And not to mention easy to make! And when their creepy stares become too much to handle, eating them is a great solution.

Start out with two circus peanuts. Cut a small chunk out of the top of one full peanut and set to the side. Then take the other peanut and cut in half "hot dog style". Then cut both halves on a diagonal. Next, arrange the peanut pieces on top of a blue frosted cupcake.


Next, use icing to secure orange peanut butter M&Ms onto the face of the koi fish, then secure the eyes by placing an orange Froot Loop mouth underneath the peanut butter M&Ms. Finally, place brown mini M&Ms onto the orange peanut butter M&Ms for the pupils. I liked letting the vanilla icing show underneath the brown mini M&Ms; I thought it made the fishes more odd looking.

How easy! I really enjoyed making these. The only downfall to these cupcakes is that I really don't like circus peanuts. But they were easy to pick off when it was time to eat!

Jungle Fever

Welcome to the jungle! These flamingo, alligator, and hippo cupcakes were a little bit of a handful but I really enjoyed making them. This recipe is another one from "What's New Cupcake", and required regular sized and mini cupcakes.

First I used neon blue food coloring to tint the vanilla icing. I iced the cupcakes only after I had the other animals made in order to ensure that the icing was wet. After icing, I rolled each cupcake in blue decorating sugar. This gives the cupcakes a little more pizazz, but if I were to do it again I would probably skip the sugar. While it looked better, it made the cupcakes a little too sweet for me.

(Ignore my wrinkly hands in the photo above, haha) I started out with the grass. I used airheads, only because I had them on hand from a different project - the recipe called for spearmint leaves. But I hate spearmint leaves so I opted for the airheads. I cut up two green airheads in different sized triangles and stuck them into the mini cupcakes. After about fifteen minutes, however, the airheads flopped over. But it wasnt hard to prop them back up.

Then I started on the hippos. I used a Nutter Butter for the hippo face. I iced on the orange Froot Loop ears and nostrils, and then I iced on the mini chocolate chip eyeballs. Let the white icing show behind the chocolate chips. I secured the hippo faces onto the regular sized cupcakes.

Next came the alligator. I used a serrated knife to cut the edges of a Nutter Butter to create a pointed shape for the head. I then used a knife to spread icing on top of the cut Nutter Butter and dipped the iced cookie into green decorating sugar. I cut the very bottom of two green Froot Loops and used them as the eyes of the alligator. I then used black tinted icing to pipe on the nostrils and pupils inside of the Froot Loops. Finally, I placed the heads on regular sized cupcakes, and used plain vanilla frosting to pipe on the alligators' teeth.

Finally I worked on the flamingos. I dipped pretzel sticks into pink melting wafers, placed the sticks onto wax paper, and stuck a large pink jellybean on the top of each stick. I put the pretzels and jellybeans in the fridge for 5 minutes. I then used a stencil to trace the wings of the flamingos onto wax paper with the pink melting wafers. I put those into the fridge for 5 minutes too. I iced the mini cupcakes with plain vanilla frosting and dipped them into pink decorating sugar. When I took the pretzel sticks out of the fridge, I inserted them into the mini cupcakes. Then, I cut banana Runts in half and used vanilla icing to secure them onto the pink jellybeans. I used black tinted frosting to pipe on the flamingos' eyes and smile. Finally, I inserted the wings and they were done!

The end result LOOKED great, but all the colored sugar made the cupcakes a little too sweet for my taste. The only time I would make these again would be for a kids party, I'm sure they would love all of the sugar!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

In the spirit of St. Patty's Day I made green velvet cupcakes with creamcheese filling. YUM. Red velvet is one of my FAVORITES, so I had to make sure these were good. I used a red velvet and cream cheese filling recipe from Lick The Bowl Good and added green food coloring to make it deliciously green! I also added a cream cheese clover for decoration (and as a good excuse to add more cream cheese).

The batter is made of:

• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons unsweetened natural cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 plus 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon vinegar
• 1 large egg
• 1 tablespoon green food coloring
• 3/4 teaspoons vanilla
• 3 tablespoons sour cream (for those of you thinking EW, it worked really well in keeping the cupcakes flat and moist)

The filling is made of:

• 4 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 ½ tablespoons lightly beaten egg
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla

This recipe is awesome because it only makes about 8 cupcakes. Who really needs 24 cupcakes sitting around the house? Its also great because it doesn't need frosting! The filling is sweet and savory enough to give you that extra punch. But make sure you refrigerate the leftovers or else the cream cheese will go bad.

First beat the cream cheese and sugar together until well mixed. Add the egg and vanilla and mix until smooth.

Combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir until well mixed. In a different bowl combine vegetable oil, sugar, vinegar, egg, food coloring, vanilla, and sour cream. Stir until well mixed. Add the liquids to the dry ingredients and stir until just mixed.

Now, fill 1/4 of the cupcake liner with the batter. Then fill another 1/4 with filling (or more depending on how much you like cream cheese!). Fill another 1/4 with batter. Finally pipe a clover design on top with the filling.

It's easiest to create these batter/filling layers when you pipe them into the liners from a baggie. This prevents the mess from a dripping spoon and also makes each cupcake more even. Just turn the baggie inside out and reach your hand into the it. Then create a cup with your hand inside the inside out baggie, and pour the batter into this cup from the outside. Then pull the top of the baggie off of your hand. This will catch all of the batter inside of the baggie and leave you with a clean hand and piping bag! I always use plastic baggies to pipe in my batter, and it never fails me!

(Inside out baggie with hand cupped inside)

I put the cupcakes in the oven for 20 minutes at 350 degrees, but I think it was a minute or two too long. Next time I'll put them in for only about 18 minutes. I'll also add more filling.

When you first take them out of the oven, the clovers will be a little bit broken because of the rising cupcakes, but as you let them cool, the cupcakes will fall and the clovers will recover. The cupcakes were SO good, and I will definitely make them again. I highly suggest trying out these fun creations. And since the color and design can change, you can use them for any occasion!

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!