I'll be back, I promise!

I've been slacking a little (a lot) with my baking, and definitely with my blogging. I think I tried to stretch myself too thin by having a blog and a facebook page and ended up not updating either of them. I'm going to focus more on my blog as I enjoy it more.

I'm moving in a couple weeks so likely won't be baking anything until then or a while after, but I'll have a gorgeous new kitchen so hopefully that will inspire me to be creative again!

Hello Halo!

I just realized I didn't post about these when I made them a couple weeks ago.

My husband's friend's birthday came around again (the same one I made Pac-Man cupcakes for last year) so I had to come up with something amazing. The first idea didn't pan out so my husband came up with Halo as a theme.

Most of this was fairly simple, but the letters almost did me in! I printed the logo the size I wanted and poked holes in the paper with a pin. I then put the paper on the rolled out fondant and the pin holes made an impression that I could trace with a pin (like those connect the dots things we did as kids) and then cut out very carefully wit a knife. I'm no pro at this so those 4 letters took me about 2 hours!

Overall I'm very happy with how they turned out and they were a hit with the birthday boy as well so I call that a success.

(Note: I can't take credit for the design as I googled to find ideas. I used aspects of a couple different pictures I found)

Happy Halloween!

I almost didn't make Halloween cupcakes this year as I wasn't feeling into it and didn't want to force the idea. Yesterday afternoon I started googling for ideas though and found some I had to try. I had never made anything like sugar glass before and love trying new techniques so it was a perfect opportunity. I think they turned out great!

If anyone would like to try it, just search for sugar glass, there are several tutorials out there. It's fairly simple, just time consuming.

I wasn't sure what to use for "blood" but my friend Becky suggested corn syrup and food coloring and it was perfect! I added a little vanilla as well to offset the taste of so much food coloring. A little goes a long way though, I have so much left over and I didn't think I made that much! It also runs easily, so try to pool it in areas that'll keep it on the cupcake and not running down the sides. I was unsuccessful here but that's okay! They're still great.

Cookie madness

Madness indeed. I recently stumbled upon an amazing cookie blog called The Sweet Adventures of Sugar Belle and decided to get back into decorating cookies. Well in short, I discovered I'm a crazy person.

The actual baking of the cookies wasn't so bad. It took me a while but my 10 month old occupied himself for the most part while I baked and the whole process went fairly smooth (although I'm quite certain I made my cookies a bit too thin, will remedy that next time).

Recently he's been really great at entertaining himself in the dining room (aka play room, the dining room table has been replaced with a big comfy chair and a basket of his toys) while I do my thing in the kitchen. I decided to decorate my cookies today, and he decided to be needy and NOT play by himself. There was lots of climbing up my legs and general whining going on in my kitchen.

I definitely should not have attempted such a feat while he was awake, and/or while I was alone with him. I should have waited until either my husband was home from work, or the little monster was in bed for the night. Lesson learned. My apple cookies are less than fantastic, but I'll post pictures of them when they've dried. If they dry. Had a little mishap there too. I'm not sure what happened exactly, since I followed the recipe instructions for the icing to the letter, but my icing turned out gritty. It ended up working anyway, but I'm wondering how it'll end up.

Anywho, I'm not going to give up!

Mad about Matcha!

These I made for a friend's birthday this past weekend. He's a huge fan of Matcha green tea, so I thought I'd give these a try. They turned out quite good! I was surprised how much the matcha flavor came through in both the cupcake (they were very green!) and the buttercream icing. There is no food coloring in these, just the matcha!

Red Velvet Cake Balls

My latest creation: Red velvet cake balls dipped in dark chocolate and drizzled with melted red chocolate. They were for my husband's grandmother's funeral unfortunately, but they tasted great!

I love making cake balls; they're so simple and look fantastic. I made some bunny cake pops the week before this as well for a friend's birthday, but there's something elegant about a cake ball without the stick. I like putting them in mini cupcake papers like this because it's easier to just drop them in there, but I need to attempt to make balls without the wrappers as well. I read that all you need to do is draw a circle around the pooled chocolate below the ball before it hardens and break off the excess chocolate after, but I haven't tried that yet. Maybe next time :)

Pac-Man Cupcakes!

I had to find a sort of geeky theme for my husband's friend's birthday cupcakes, so I came up with these. They turned out great!

I used a white boxed cake for the cupcakes and cut the tops off after baking so they'd be flat on top. I added a layer of yellow buttercream icing and black fondant on top. For the decorations I used colored gum paste. When the decorations were dry I used clear vanilla applied with a paint brush to stick them to the cupcakes.

The whole process was quite time consuming but not too difficult.