birthday — Page 2

50th Birthday Party Cupcakes

April 3, 2011 by Jenn

This was a really fun project! I love doing anything in mini, so as soon as my suggestion of “mini” cupcakes with a spring theme to everything got accepted, I got excited. I knew exactly what I was going to do.

My directions for this order were to have large carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese icing, mini chocolate cupcakes with chocolate buttercream, mini vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream, 50’s all over the place, and lots of spring flowers.

For the Carrot Cake cupcakes, I went with a new recipe, and though it tasted really delicious, I wasn’t that happy with how it looked. It was actually kind of difficult to bake. I’m not sure if this is common for carrot cake recipes, but I’m still on a search for the perfect recipe that I can use regularly with the Cakery.

Has anyone ever made Ina Garten’s Carrot Cake recipe that can be found on the Food Network’s website? How did it turn out for you? Like I said, it tasted great . . . hearty, sweet with lots of flavour to it, but it’s appearance was less than stellar. I hoped all the decorations and icing would hide it’s “unique personality”. The base of the cupcake was perfectly cooked, but the top was on the crispy side. It was my weirdest baking experience to date . . . except for the one time I mixed up baking powder for baking soda. Boy does that ever make a difference! Who knew!?

For the decorations on the mini’s, I used a simple flower cutter, with a gum paste/fondant mixture. *Note: Whenever you add gum paste to your fondant, the fondant will become much harder that it would on it’s own. The pearls in the middle of the flowers are just pastel coloured dragees. (WTF is a dragee anyway?!?!?). The leaves are cut with a mini leaf cuter and then touched up with a veining tool for a more lifelike appearance.

I’ve heard the birthday was a successful surprise, and that the cupcakes were a great hit! I’m so glad I could be a positive part of the event. Happy 50th Birthday Donna!

Filed Under: Cupcakes Tagged With: 50th Birthday, birthday, carrot cake cupcakes

Chocolate Castle Cake

February 5, 2011 by Jenn

Searching for the best chocolate cake recipe? Well, I have found it! Truth be told, I didn’t find it on my own, I relied on my favourite talented baking friend, Gretchen’s, advice. This recipe comes from the Hershey factory and is moist and very chocolaty!

I have been looking forward to Friday night since I got the order for this cake on Monday. A castle cake! How cool. To make it even cooler, it’s for a boy! I LOVE doing girly cakes and cupcakes of course, but it’s nice to have a change from pink, pink and more pink.

I started out searching Google Images (of course) and Flikr for ways to decorate this cake. (I was working from Wilton’s Castle Cake pan). I knew I wanted to go black and grey, but I wasn’t exactly sure how to get my icing black. Last night, at my cake decorating class, I overheard my instructor talking to someone else and I caught “Start with chocolate icing to get the black, black colour”. Ah ha! That was the missing piece.

I base iced (aka crumb coated! I’ve started speaking Wilton! Aghhhh!) the cake in chocolate buttercream, and realized that I didn’t need to do this step. Base icing a shape pan actually makes it harder to see where you are supposed to be piping. I recommend not base icing this particular pan.

I started out with a #12 round tip for the turrets in grey. Then, a # 18 star tip for the black part of the castle.

A great tip I learned this week from my Wilton Instructor was to line up your tip when you are doing a star piped cake. What this means is make sure the # sign is in the same direction at all times. This way, all of your stars will line up together perfectly!

This cake took about two hours to pipe. It wasn’t tough, just tedious. I was starting to grow crossed eyed, having stared at the stars for so long! My glasses were needed and I had to bring in more lights!

I used silver candy beads to decorate around the door and to represent the windows.

Using #12 round tip again, I added the birthday boy’s name for completion!

Recipe:

Chocolate Castle Cake

(adapted from hersheys.com)

The first thing you need to note is that the batter will be VERY thin once you add the water at the end. Don’t worry! Just go with it.

Ingredients:

2 cups sugar
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup HERSHEY’S Cocoa
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water

Directions:

Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans.
Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pans.
Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake 35 to 40 minutes. Cool completely. You can start decorating once the cake is completely cooled.

Now it’s YOUR turn . . . Have you tried baking and decorating with shape pans? What kind of shape pans have you had success with?

Filed Under: Cakes Tagged With: birthday, boy birthday, castle cake, chocolate cake

Giant Filled Birthday Cupcake

January 23, 2011 by Jenn

Homemade Funfetti Giant Cupcake, filled with Raspberry and Raspberry Cream Icing

. . . . wow that’s a mouthful! Perhaps I should start working on naming my creations 🙂

My cake that I got asked to do this week, is my favourite shape to bake. I think it’s because it turns out so cute, and who wouldn’t LOVE a GIANT cupcake.

This was for a 7 year old Lauren’s birthday, and it was pretty much bigger than her head! Her request was “Funfetti, with raspberry cream icing, and some blue”. Uh, it’s sort of hard to tint bright pink naturally coloured icing blue, so I had to improvise.

I also made it more exciting for me, since the only flavour of cake I have made in the last week was funfetti (funfetti recipe here) and I filled the centre of the cupcake with raspberry jam. Mmmmmm, it looked so good. I LOVE how colourful the confetti makes the batter. Before you start icing, remember to level the tops of the two cake pieces as they come out slightly rounded from the pan.

To make the “wrapper” I used chocolate icing and tip # 31. It is pretty much essential that you decorate the bottom of the cupcake first, as the top will get in the way if you put it on first. I iced from the bottom, up to the top.

Here, I added rosettes in between crevices . . . just to add interest (not that you aren’t on the edge of your seat when you look at one of my creations). At this point, fill the top over with icing, and place the lid of the cupcake on top, being careful to line up the sides.

I iced the top with Raspberry Buttercream (recipe here), using tip 1M. You want a stiff icing to keep its shape. Go easy on the liquid. If you are following my recipe, I omitted all of the milk.

And how did I incorporate the request for blue . . . on a pink cake? I went with marshmallow flowers! I was intending to use fondant cut outs, but making flowers from marshmallows is something that I’ve been wanting to try for a while. I didn’t have any small ones (which I recommend that you use), so I made them with large. Cut the marshmallows with clean scissors, and dip into blue sprinkles. I let mine dry overnight, in order for them to stay together on the cake.

I love making this cake! There are so many possibilities of ways to decorate a giant cupcake. Despite my own skepticism and doubt on being able to pull off the blue flowers, I think it turned out well.

Candles are little bit much for my decorating style, but when you’re 7, it’s all about the candles. Happy birthday, Lauren!

What is your favourite shape cake to bake? I’d love to hear from you.

Filed Under: Cupcakes Tagged With: birthday, giant cupcake, marshmallow flowers, raspberry cream icing

Birthday Princess Cupcakes

January 19, 2011 by Jenn

Hasn’t every girl dreamed that she would one day be a princess?

This week, I had the pleasure of opening up my fondant again to jump head first into the land of fairy tales! Princess, princes, magic wands, castles, and magic. What more could a four year old girl want for her fourth birthday? It was up to me to make it happen (boy, does that ever make me sound important). When I actually realized what I had signed on for, a little panic ripped through me . . . not going to lie about that one! After hours of searching Flickr (check out CCC profile out here), I finally had enough inspiration to get started.

The birthday girl requested Funfetti with Raspberry Cream Icing . . . mmmm . . . too bad one wasn’t for me 🙁

Here is the recipe for the Homemade Funfetti.

I used a different type of sprinkles for these cupcakes than I did in the original recipe that I made. I would stick with the long oblong sprinkles, over these small little ball sprinkles, as these ones coloured the batter. Also, I think they might have made the cupcake a little bit crunchier than necessary . . . I’ll have to ask the birthday girl to figure that one out!

The princess' age

I got started in the morning, working with the fondant shapes that I wanted for this design.

The princess' castles

The princess' wands

No princess is complete with out her crown!

The princess' crowns

Like my improvising with the spice bottles? Can you tell that I’m new and don’t have all the tools yet? Thank goodness I’m resourceful. I needed something to shape the crown. If you’re a fondant expert, please let me know how you’re REALLY supposed to do this!

On to the icing . . .

Raspberry Cream Icing

1/2 cup of butter

1/2 cup of raspberries (fresh or frozen) If using frozen, make sure they are thawed.

4 cups of icing sugar

1 tsp of vanilla

1-2 tbsp milk (if needed)

Cream butter and raspberries in a stand mixture. Add one cup of icing at a time. Mixing in-between cup additions. Add vanilla, and mix. If the icing is too thick at this point, add one to two tablespoons of milk to thin.

Time to add the fondant! Abracadabra!

Filed Under: Cupcakes Tagged With: birthday, cupcakes, girls birthday, princess, princess cupcakes, raspberry, raspberry cream icing

Champagne Cupcakes

January 2, 2011 by Jenn

As you might have read in yesterday’s post, I declared this year my Champagne birthday celebration. So what does one do when it’s their champagne birthday? They bake cupcakes!

Champagne Cupcakes

For the cake part, you can use any flavour of cake mix that you would like to (I used French Vanilla) and substitute the water amount with champagne. As always, read ALL (hmmm, is that a shot at myself?) of the directions before you start…especially for the filling, as there are a number of different steps.

Cupcake:

1 box of white cake mix

1 1/4 cups of champagne

3 eggs

Bake cake as according to the directions on the back of the box . . . or as how your favourite recipe suggests.

Filling:

adapted from Sprinkle Bakes

1/2 cup half and half, divided (original recipe calls for heavy cream, but I only had this, and it turned out fine)

1/2 cup champagne

2 tbsp cornstarch

5 tbsp granulated sugar

1 whole egg

2 egg yolks

2 tbsp unsalted butter

1 tsp vanilla

In a medium bowl, whisk cornstarch in 1/4 cup of cream. Combine the remaining cream, sugar and 1/2 cup champagne in a saucepan; bring to a boil then remove from heat.

Beat the whole egg and egg yolks into the cornstarch/heavy cream mixture. Pour 1/3 of boiling champagne mixture into the egg mixture, whisking constantly so the eggs do not cook. Return the remaining champagne/cream mixture to a boil. Pour in the hot egg mixture in a stream, whisking constantly until the mixture thickens. Remove from heat and beat in the butter and vanilla. It will seems like it is never going to thicken, then BAM all of a sudden, you have filling!

Cut a divot into the top of each cupcake and fill with pastry cream.

Trim the cut-out cake pieces flat to make a “lid” . . .

. . . and place on top of the filled divot.

Frosting:

adapted from Homemade by Holman

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

3-4 cups powdered sugar

3 Tbsp champagne

In a large mixing bowl, beat butter on medium high speed until smooth and fluffy. Add vanilla extract and about three cups of powdered sugar. Mix on low speed to ensure you don’t get covered in icing sugar! Add in champagne and mix on low to incorporate. Increase speed to medium and beat about one minute to whip frosting. I needed to add an extra TBSP of champagne to the icing to get the correct consistency.

Frost cooled cupcakes as desired. I used Wilton white candy pearls, and put each one on it’s place with tweezers! Labour intensive, but worth it for the look. Elegant and tasty.

Filed Under: Cupcakes Tagged With: birthday, champagne, champagne cupcakes, cupcakes

Giant Cupcake

November 16, 2010 by Jenn

My good friend Cassie’s daughter and I have a very special relationship….we love each other. I have know Laurel, or Lola as she’s affectionately known, since she was in the womb and since it was her 5th birthday on Sunday, I decided that I would make her a giant cupcake. That, and I was dying to use my new giant cupcake pan that I bought 3 days ago 😉

Wilton Giant Cupcake Pan

The pan comes with directions on how to use it properly, and I’m sure if you read them correctly, you will be fine. I read them wrong! The pan takes a full cake mix + a couple of extra cups of batter, not the opposite. Yes, I took out cake batter from the mix….duh. When I looked at the partially filled pan, I figured, “Well, they must know what they’re talking about. Maybe it rises extra high in a pan like this.” Uhh, no, read the instructions properly dufus. Anyway, I still was able to make it work…just slightly less than giant….lets go with jumbo!

So step one is to follow the instructions properly. Then, use a sharp bread knife, or other sharp cutting tool to level off the cake top and bottom. This il give you a flat surface to join them together.

You want to work with the bottom of the cupcake first. Ice the top with your favourite buttercream frosting. Check the bottom of this post for the Buttercream Icing recipe.

Then decorate the bottom as you want….I had also just bought a bunch of new tips, so I was experimenting with number 22 and number 18.

When you have completed the bottom, put the top on! Just thought I should put that step in, in case you thought you were finished at this point.

For this shade of purple (lilac) I use a small amount of Wilton Gel Colouring in Purple. Pretty, hey?

Tip No. 22 along the bottom

Tip No. 18 for the sides and rosettes

Mmmmm sprinkles....remind me of the Birthday Cake Ice Cream from the Ice Cream Shoppe at the Superstore...anyway....

Cake and Icing Sandwich

Lola with her cupcake

Lola and I

Final step…make a delicious leftovers sandwich. These leftovers just happen to be cake and icing….mmmm. Delish. Remember that spin to sin motto!

The excitement on Lola’s face when she opened the door to see a cupcake bigger than her head was great! Was it the cupcake, or the box of candy that I also brought???? Whichever it was, her grin really brought a smile to my face after a long day…sob, sniff, whine….Thanks for the dinner Cassie and family, and of course, thanks Lola for having a birthday and allowing me an excuse to bake! Love you guys.

Buttercream Icing Recipe

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine softened
1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract
4 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar (approximately 1 lb.)
2 tablespoons milk

Filed Under: Cupcakes Tagged With: birthday, buttercream icing, cupcakes, giant cupcake

50th Birthday Party Cupcakes

Chocolate Castle Cake

Giant Filled Birthday Cupcake

Birthday Princess Cupcakes

Champagne Cupcakes

Giant Cupcake

Happiness is Homemade

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50th Birthday Party Cupcakes

Chocolate Castle Cake

Giant Filled Birthday Cupcake

Birthday Princess Cupcakes

Champagne Cupcakes

Giant Cupcake

Happiness is Homemade

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