Dream Baby Shower

So, i have had this ideal baby shower vision in my head for quite some time now and was finally able to make it a reality. I love polka dots so i really enjoyed this job. Hope's friend from back home wanted to really throw a good baby shower for her friend so she enlisted our help! We did a dozen chocolate chip with cream cheese filling and a dozen white cupcakes with bavarian cream filling cupcakes with pink, chocolate, and white fondant decorations and a coordinating 6" and 8" stacked cake. The cake will have a big pink bow on top but will need to be added when assembly is complete. Hopefully i will get a good picture to post when the party is over. 

We also did two dozen chocolate dipped sandwich cookie favors with pink baby decorations for guests to pick up on their way out. Everything turned out so cute and this was such an easy job to do. Maybe this means we are getting better at it? Who knows, but i am so glad i was finally able to do this! I have been waiting on someone to have a girl, so i could have some baking fun!!! 

 

Happy Halloween!

I decided to make some Halloween treats for us to bring tailgating for the LSU game. I made pumpkin spice cupcakes and pumpkin chocolate chip cupcakes with buttercream icing. I also made some fondant flowers to use as decorations and added candy corn to the tops of some of the cupcakes as well. I also made candy corn bark and chocolate dipped oreos.

Breast Cancer Awareness

October is breast cancer awareness month so i decided to make some pink cupcakes to honor it! These cupcakes are pink lemonade with lemon buttercream in hot pink cupcake liners and adorned with pink ribbons (one with pink sugar crystals and one without). They were pretty good, not perfect, but good. I will still be working on my recipe. I also made a few little white chocolate dipped sandwich favors to go with it.

Gender Neutral Baby Shower

My Sister in Law's baby shower was today and i made the cupcakes to go with the theme. I made two dozen chocolate chip cupcakes with chocolate cream filling and two dozen white cupcakes with vanilla cream filling.

Amish Friendship Bread

I got my start from Hope for this bread and thought it was such a cute idea! I had never heard of it. You get the starting materials already mixed and squish it everyday until day five when more things are added. The daily squishing continues until day 10 when the same things are added and more of things that you want. I added pudding and chocolate chips. It was so good! 

On a side note, i am experimenting with my photography so hopefully my pictures look better from here on out than they used to!

My Charity Contribution

Not that i really contributed much, but i just had to share the big order i had that will be included in a gift basket at a charity event in Ohio. One order of 100 baking cups of everything i have in stock is what i am sending and i just had to take a picture when i started packing them in because of the beautiful colors.

Shake, Rattle, and Roll!

This is a rattle cake i made for my employee who is about to go on maternity leave with her second child. It is a chocolate chip cake with pink and brown fondant and buttercream trim/writing. It was the perfect amount of cake for the 5 of us going to dinner for her tomorrow night. The fondant got so soft while i was working with it. I'm not sure if it was because my house wasn't as cool as it should have been or if my hands were warm. Anyway, i'm new to fondant but really love what fondant cakes look like so i just need to keep practicing!

Happy Cheaper Insurance Day

My husband's birthday was today and all the family went to dinner. I made him his favorite cake, funfetti. This is also my first fondant covered cake and i was really nervous because i froze it but it turned out perfect! I obviously need to practice covering the cakes with fondant but for my first, it turned out okay but it was delicious! I forgot to push down the edges of the dots on the sides before i took this picture. The words were free hand, not too bad if i say so myself! Happy Birthday Love, you old fart!

A Present for Hope

Today was the second day in our Course 3 class and we had to bring an iced square cake to class to cover in fondant. I decided to bake a chocolate cake with peanut butter chips and peanut butter filling. Instead of bringing this cake to work and then making another one for Hope's birthday next weekend, i decided to do as good a job as i could and keep it for her on her birthday. I only had one gaping hole so i guess that means i was successful. I put entirely too much icing on the cake before i covered it in fondant so it oozed out while i was covering it. You can kind of see it in the front shot below (it is in the bottom right corner of the cake). I also had to squish my 3D bow down because the carrying case wasn't tall enough. Anyway, i can't wait to taste it! I think this is going to be one of the best tasting cakes i have done so far, but i'll have to wait and see until next weekend!

Birthday Disaster

My Father in law's birthday was the 7th but we celebrated today because my husband was out of town. Well, my FIL wanted an ice cream cake and when i tried to make it the ice cream must have been too soft or not in the freezer long enough after i filled it because when i put it together the ice cream came gushing out all over the floor! Well, i threw that one away and just decided to hurry and make him a yellow cake. I was experimenting with fondant so the big balloons on the side are too big. I just tried to make due with what i had available but it turned out ok. It was really good though!

Birthdays and Babies

I had two jobs to do for today. One was a pink and white polka dot birthday party for two twin girls and the other a pink and brown girl baby shower.

For the twins' birthday party i did three dozen cupcakes for the guests and jumbo cupcakes for the girls because they requested "muffins" or "cuppy cakes" as their separate personal cake. I used some solid pink and some pink polka dot cupcake liners and did both chocolate and white cupcakes each decorated with bright pink fondant decorations stamped with birthday images (if you look close, you can see them in the picture below). For the girls i did jumbo cupcakes to be placed on a cake drum with fondant decorations with their name. For the twin that wanted a white cupcake, i decided to do hot pink striping in the batter. I finished each jumbo cupcake with pink mouse ears to go with the party theme. There will also be a candle on each cupcake for the girls to blow out.


For the baby shower, i made a custom pink and brown polka dot cupcake tower and made both chocolate and white cupcakes and petit fours each with a white M monogram in chocolate cupcake liners. The petit fours do not even deserve to be called petit because they ended up being HUGE! So, i'll call them grand fours.


What a job this was. Cupcakes: no problem, fondant letter and petit (grand) fours: TIME CONSUMING! I began at 8pm and didn't finish until 2am. I think my feet fell off somewhere in the kitchen... i'll just look for them in the morning. In the morning you ask? Yes, i am blogging at 2:42 AM waiting on the petit-grand fours to dry but dry or not, i'm putting them up now or else i'll be sleep blogging!

Web Store

Since i don't have any jobs being finished this week for pictures i thought i would post that i have bought so many baking cups, i decided to open an online store to sell some of them in. Bear with me because i just populated it but it is there nonetheless! I have to buy thousands at a time to get a good price so i have more than i need presently. These would make your baking that much sweeter!

Sugar Cookie Experiment

I still had some royal icing left over from my course two Wilton class and since i used the leftover pink for flowers, i decided to experiment and use the left over purple to make sugar cookies. I had never made sugar cookies from scratch so i had no idea how this would turn out. Well, the dough was a little tough to work with because it was mushy and not as stiff as i would have liked but oh well maybe it was too hot in my house. The icing was not as runny as it needed to be but i was pressed for time because i was late for a girl's night out! They were really good though, at least as good as sugar cookies can get. I'm not a big fan of sugar cookies but they were good nonetheless. I went to Party Time yesterday and bought some stuff for something for next week so while i was there, why not buy everything else i don't need!?!? Just kidding, but i did buy a bucket of cookie cutters. I guess now i know what theme i will have on my Christmas list! I want, oh i mean i NEED, everything!

Our First Job.... A Baby Shower!

Hope and I did our first baby shower baking today. We made two dozen chocolate chip cupcakes and two dozen white chocolate cupcakes all with blue, green, and yellow pastel baby items on top. We are so happy with them, they came out SO cute!

Intermediate Class.... Mission Accomplished!

Today was our last day in the intermediate decorating class. This class was only three classes long because the teacher couldn't do the fourth class so we came early on a few days. Hope was on a teaching conference in Boston (jealous) for the week to come back today so i baked and dirty iced both of our cakes and this was the best cake i have ever made!! It was oh sweet and moist.... YUM! We learned basketweaving today and covered our cakes in it. We had to put the flowers we made on our cakes along with the dreaded birds but i'm still proud nonetheless. We also learned the rope technique which was pretty easy and i loved it. Unfortunately these classes don't give us a lot of room for creativity because we follow along through the book to create the cakes using what we have learned. I absolutely CANNOT wait for the advanced decorating class so we can touch on fondant and i am further taking the fondant and gumpaste class. I may just fall over from excitement, but i must wait for those until September. I am so glad i started doing this!

Friends, Food, and Fun

We had a get together at our house last night and had a bunch of friends over. We barbecued hot dogs and hamburgers and we had chips and dip and some monogrammed cupcakes. I also made a taco dip and deviled eggs. I have never made deviled eggs, but they were so good, that was the first thing to go! The vanilla cupcakes are filled with a vanilla cream cheese filling and topped with buttercream and the chocolate chip ones are filled with mousse and topped with chocolate buttercream. I hand drew the monograms with chocolate and topped them with sugar crystals.

Practice Run

In an effort to prepare for our get together next weekend at our house, i decided to make a practice run of the chocolate and white cupcakes i wanted to serve. The chocolate cupcakes have chocolate mousse filling and chocolate buttercream icing and the white cupcakes are amaretto cake cupcakes with bavarian cream filling and buttercream icing. They were so good but oh so very rich. The mouse came out SO good. That's the first time i made any kind of mousse.

I made way too much for a tasting but i forgot i was making half a batch and put the full batch of eggs so i had to double everything else i had already done! Oh well. The more the merrier, right? The people at work will love me... I ended up making about 40 cupcakes. Yum! Here are the cupcakes with the filling showing placed on my magnificant appetizer plates.

Recipes

If anyone has any yummy baking recipes they would be willing to share, please do. If you would like, email to shannonlharvey at aol dot com. I am especially interested in moist cake, filling, and buttercream frosting/icing recipes so that i can expand my recipe box of options to choose from. I would share mine but i don't have any yet! Also, what is your secret to a moist cake? I have seen a ton of add-ins discussed online. I know i will come across a tried and true recipe i like but i am being very experimental right now!

The Red, White, and Blue

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July weekend, i know i did. I just got back from a weekend at the beach and wanted to post Thursday's cake for you. It was our last class of our beginner's class. We even got a certificate!!! So cute..

Hope and I of course made our cakes festive so we could enjoy them along with all the great food we ate. I left my cake at work for them to enjoy and we brought Hope's to Florida. We decided to make some stars on top of our cakes and insert a few scattered jumbo start sprinkles i bought a little while back. We also sprinkled the top with red, white, and blue non-pareils. The cake was red velvet. We didn't have enough food coloring so we used half of what the recipe called for. The cakes were okay but there is another recipe i want to try for a better outcome. The icing started to melt off the sides but it was delicious!

My Cake

Hope's Cake

The Inside

One down, a bunch to go!

I also decided to make some cheesecake balls to bring to work for Monday. They were so good and fun to make!

My new obsession...

I have been looking online at all the cool baking accessories and have come across and purchased a lovely selection of baking cups. I love baking cups! Look how cute some of these are especially the pink and black zebra ones and of course the polka dot ones. I am sure i will find a use for all of these some time in the future right? If only i could find a baking cup holder of sorts. They are just in a box right now in my house and i want them to be more organized than that. They are also made out of greaseproof paper so the color won't change while baking due to the grease in the batter. How awesome is that? I'm in love...