Odds and Ends: Cupcake Style

So before I decided to make this cupcake blog I had done a few cupcakes here and there so I wanted to use a post to show some of those cupcakes! The above cupcakes are some that my friend Ally helped me with, they are reese's chocolate cupcakes with a reese's middle. They were in honor of my friend Blake's Birthday last year.

 These cupcakes are cheesecake cupcakes that my roomie Claire and I made for New Year's Eve this year. We used mint leaves, dark chocolate chunks, chocolate shavings and orange peels curled for decoration.

I had so much fun making those peel curls, they made the cupcakes look very gourmet. My lovely roomie Claire is an awesome baker. She even has a blog about fashion and odds and ends of her life at http://mississippigirlmisplaced.blogspot.com/  , you should check it out! 

Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes! Pretty basic, thankfully my aunt had a stand thats made for making this exact kind of cupcake so she lent me that to make these. 

I had a ridiculously handsome co-chef for these cupcakes... 

Stay tuned because we will be redoing another type of ice cream cone cupcakes together sometime this summer! 

And so after this random cupcake post I will leave you with this great piece of advice... 

Oh, it's Beach Time.

Sadly this summer I am not going on vacation so instead I brought to beach to me... cupcake style. 

I used the same Buttercream Frosting that I used for my yellow with pink flowers cupcakes. 

Extra things i needed for this recipe was...

Cocktail Umbrellas

Blue Foam (for the shark fins)

Teddy Grams

and your favorite cake mix

For the sandy beach cupcakes, I crushed up Teddy Grams, leaving a few for putting them on the cupcakes and stuck cocktail umbrellas that I found at the dollar store for the finishing touch. 

I mixed blue food dye in the frosting for the ocean cupcakes and traced fin shapes on blue foam then cut them out, adding a few Teddy Grams for finishing touch. 

These cupcakes took absolutely no time. I finished them within a half hour, not hard at all, great for beginners! And viola! Beach time- Summer time cucpakes

I Got Sunshine

"I got sunshine, on a cloudy day..." The song had been in my head all day. Its the first week of summer and instead of being sunny it's been raining for days straight... So to make myself happy I decided to bake some bright colored cupcakes to bring myself sunshine on this dreadfully cloudy day.

I made my own icing with this batch:

The Buttercream Frosting was delicious! I didn't have a mixer however and so it took me a very long to get it mixed properly. And the more you mix it, the better it tastes. The shortening thats in it takes awhile to get mixed in so when it finally does it will taste awesome. 

With these cupcakes my main experiment was using candy melts. The candy melts were an experience. I burnt both of my candy melt tubes in the microwave because my microwave is so strong, so FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS carefully. I had to learn the hard way. 

I drew out a sketch of a flower and put wax paper over the paper, using the melting tubes I melted the candy melts and made pink candy flowers. Its a pretty simple idea if you have a sketch to follow along with. 

A good tip to know is to have a toothpick readily available to fill in the flowers because if not you will end up with air holes on the other side of the flower. As you can see i ended up with those air holes in my flowers. You will have to keep reheating the candy tubes over and over again, they harden quickly. 

Using some bright yellow food dye I made yellow icing, and viola I have some bright sunny cupcakes.