show time cupcakes!

The inspiration for these film-reel cupcakes came this past weekend when my husband was off editing a movie for a 48hr film competition!  I made a cinnamon swirl cake with cream cheese frosting and made the reels with mini oreos and black licorice laces.  They made for a 'reel' good dessert :)  

Grab a cupcake and watch Jeremy's movie here:

http://vimeo.com/29633658

password is: 2littlesl33p

summertime sweets

My channel of choice these days has been the food network, which has got my brain into the experimental mode with my cupcakes! So this summer I made a watermelon basil, ginger blueberry and meyer lemon cupcake. For the watermelon basil, I added some watermelon flavor and dried basil to a vanilla batter - the flavor was subtle but nice, you got a hint of the basil and the sweetness of the watermelon. The ginger blueberry was also subtle - next time I would add more fresh ginger and maybe a little dried too, I punched up the blueberry flavor with some 'blueberry flavor' additive along with fresh blueberries. And the meyer lemon was made with pure meyer lemon juice and lots of zest - the sweet lemony flavor really shone through this cupcake and was excellent with a cream cheese frosting :) YUM!

cherry blossoms and lavender infusion...

I had such a fun time making this cherry blossom theme cake for a friend's wedding this past spring. The cake was a yummy vanilla bean flavor with buttercream icing. I made the cherry blossoms with royal icing and painted them with food coloring. The branch was made out of marshmallow fondant and cocoa - a really easy way to make fondant, just melted marshmallows and icing sugar!

For the mini cupcakes, I made a vanilla cake with lavender infused buttercream icing. I added just a drop of lavender oil into my tiffany blue colored buttercream as the oil is so potent you wouldn't want to add any more - it made my kitchen smell wonderful!

Thanks Katy for for this privilege and kudos to your photographer muiradams.com for these amazing pictures!

here kitty, kitty, kitty cake...

Black licorice strings are so versatile I have realized in this cake-making business! And what else, if you want to make one of those "giant cupcake cakes" use your pyrex bowl to make the dome of your giant cupcake and save the $30 for those specialized pans - I used my pyrex to make the dome for the kitty face.

This kitty calico cake was made for someone's birthday this month, the flavour was chocolate peanut butter chip (the two best combinations in my humble opinion ;) The cake is composed of 3 layers: two 8" rounds and one dome round that I baked in my large pyrex bowl - just remember to grease and flour your pans, but you don't need to flour the pyrex bowl. I love being creative with the plethora of candies out there to decorate! Licorice assortments, black licorice strings, gum drops, a rolled out starburst for the tongue, and sour 'tape' for the collar were all part of this foodie feline.

good kitty ^..^

Spring is in the air... and in your cupcake

I had fun experimenting with a new icing tip to make chrysanthemums! A semi-circle tip allows you to create these tiny petals. My mum is a pro-star icing flower maker and she helped me with these garden cupcakes decorated with orange poppies, sweet peas, begonias and the chrysanthemums. We made a variety of flavours and had a lot of fun decorating! Check out the image below to get your chrysanthemum icing tip!

Bring some spring to your cupcakes :)

what a HOOT!

Look how cute these guys are! Not as cute as my 1 year old nephew who gobbled his cupcake down last weekend on his Birthday! These owl cupcakes are chocolate chocolate goodness, decorated with marshmallow eyes, reese's pieces for the beak and 'feathers' and then chocolate chips for his little ears. MMmmm good :)

A taste of summer in January

Key Lime Pie Cupcakes!

Here's what I did:

I whipped up a batch of vanilla cupcakes but added some lime zest. But what makes it a key lime pie cupcake you might ask? Well, I made a filling using sweetened condensed milk, lime juice and lime zest, then I hollowed out a little hole in the centre of each cake and added some filling using an icing bag (I then replaced the cupcake 'cap' that I cut out). To top it off, instead of using regular icing, I made meringue and piped some on top of the cakes and then broiled them in the oven, watching very very carefully so that the meringue didn't burn! The cakes only needed a few seconds under the broiler for the meringue to broil nicely.

YUM :)