Adventure Time Cupcakes

A few weeks back, I did a cupcake order that was a request for Adventure Time! Here are the photos from that order. Thanks to Alvaro Alvarez for taking these photos!

Jack Skellington Cake

Today, I have the wonderful opportunity of baking a birthday cake as a gift for my boyfriend's brother! Now that I'm pretty seasoned on making my own fondant, I was so excited to be able to practice on this cake! Happy birthday, Jason! 

How to Make Fondant!

I have a cupcake order this weekend for a birthday, and I wanted to show you all how I made the fondant for the decorations! This was seriously so easy to make and I'm positive I will never buy fondant again! Thank you to my wonderful mother who helped by taking these photos!

You'll Need...

• 16 oz. mini marshmallows
• 7 cups of powdered sugar (I just used a whole bag of it, you may need some extra depending on how firm you want the fondant to be)
• 2-5 tablespoons of water
• 1/2 cup Crisco (vegetable shortening)
• A wooden spoon or rubber spatula for mixing

First, pour your marshmallows into a large microwave-safe bowl and add 2 tablespoons of water. Put it in the microwave for 30 seconds.

Remove from the microwave and stir. It may not seem like the marshmallows have melted yet, but the stirring definitely helps between each microwave session.

Put the bowl in for another 30 seconds, remove and stir again. You should really start to see the melting process begin!

Put the bowl in for another 30 seconds, remove and stir. This should be the last time you have to microwave the marshmallows, but be sure to stir everything to ensure there are no whole marshmallows.

Next, add 3/4 of your powdered sugar and stir it in.

At first, this will look like one big mess and NOTHING like fondant. Don't be discouraged!! This is just the first step! Keep on mixing, just think of it as a good arm workout!

Keep blending the two ingredients together. The mixture will still kind of be hot, so don't try kneading it too soon!

Next, spread some Crisco on your counter (make sure it's clean first!) so the marshmallow doesn't stick to it.

Then take Crisco and spread it all over your hands. This step helps so much!!

Next, dump out the marshmallow mix onto the counter where you spread the shortening and wipe off any excess from your spoon/spatula.

Begin kneading the mixture like you would with bread dough. It will feel like one giant, weird marshmallow. Keep on keeping on!

Occasionally, add more powdered sugar to help the firmness set in, and continue to knead...

Eventually, you may become EXTREMELY excited like me when you see that it's starting to become fondant! Feel free to show your neighbors or members of your household! Beware, you make receive strange looks!

As soon as you feel it starting to firm up, you'll want to do a 'stretch-test'. Grab a chunk of the fondant and stretch it out. If it looks like this, you'll want more powdered sugar. I'm looking for a more firm material to work with and this it just a little too stretchy for my taste.

Keep kneading...

and adding more powdered sugar...

Alright, here's our next stretch test!

And the results are perfect! This stretched about two inches and then disconnected! That's exactly what I'm looking for!

When you have the texture you're looking for, rub some more shortening on your hands so you can spread it onto the fondant

Ta da!

Wrap the finished product in cling wrap and store at room temp. for 12-24 hours. The shortening you rubbed onto it will be absorbed into the fondant, acting as a preservative for the time being.

Pie Cupcakes

Hello again! I feel a little more active on this blog now that I finally decided to share it on my Facebook page. I've been apprecaiting all the love I've received and couldn't be happier with how everything turned out!

Some of my favorite clients ordered again! The same lovely people who ordered my Spiderweb Cupcakes and my Ombre Cupcakes placed another order for their 'Friendsgiving' that they were holding the day before Thanksgiving. They wanted one dozen cupcakes made to look like pies, but made with Stevia instead of sugar. 

I have never baked with Stevia before, so I knew this was going to be a challenge. I found a Stevia bag that measured just like sugar! Cup for cup! Finding this was a life saver!

Below, you'll find pictures of how everything was decorated, but no recipe. The recipe was just a plain vanilla with the Stevia replacement. The photos demonstrate how to decorate cupcakes so they look like pies, but with a twist because my clients wanted pie filling, too! Enjoy!!

The Finished Product

Baking, baking, baking

The pie filling was added by cutting a cone-shaped chunk out of the top of the cupcake. PLEASE make sure to keep the top matched with the cupcake it came from. Trust me- it'll make things a LOT easier!

Here's a shot with the filling added in. Just enough cherries for each cupcake!

I bought a bag of m&m's, and satisfied my OCD by separating the colors. You can use any color, but since I wanted to keep a pie-theme, I chose red and blue only.

I recommend frosting your cupcake before you start decorating. The frosting will help the candies stay on the cupcake while you continue to decorate.

I recommend starting with 1 candy in the center, 5 candies around the center, and however many candies that can fit on it after the center is done.

Do the candies first before you pipe everything! 

Ta-Dah!

Perfect Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes

This post is a day late, but I still think I'm good. This is one of my favorite recipes to make around Thanksgiving, it makes your whole house smell like pumpkin and they just taste AMAZING! I love this recipe. 
Now, if you make this recipe, just know that my pictures show a tripled batch, meaning I made three times the amount the recipe called for. So, don't worry if your bowl doesn't look like it's about to overflow with batter (that was definitely a scary moment!! Haha!). I also did this recipe with some slight variations because I had some issues with the size of the bowl on my stand mixer. The bowl was not big enough to be able to handle such a huge recipe. But that's what Black Friday is for, right? A chance to find a new bowl!

The finished product!

Yields: 12 Cupcakes
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Bake Time: 18-20 minutes
Total Time: Roughly 1 hour


Ingredients

For the Cupcakes:

• 4 cups of all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 2 sticks of butter
• 2, 1/2 cups dark brown sugar, packed
• 4 large eggs
• 1/2 cup water
• 1, 1/2 cups canned pumpkin

For the Frosting:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter
• 12 oz. cream cheese
• 1 pound (4 cups) powdered sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Make the Cupcakes: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners; set aside.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves; set aside.

3. In an electric stand mixer, start mixing the butter, about 1-2 minutes until smooth and creamy. Add the brown sugar, half a cup at a time, making sure to break up any chunks of brown sugar so no lumps remain. Add the eggs, one at a time. Add the flour mixture in two additions, folding with a rubber spatula until no flour pockets remain. Add the pumpkin and water to the batter, slowly and making sure to not spill any out of the bowl. Mix for an additional minute.

4. Divide the batter between the baking cups, filling each about two-thirds full. Bake until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean, 18 to 20 minutes. Allow to cool in the pan for 5 to 10 minutes, then remove to a wire rack. Allow the cupcakes to cool completely before frosting.

5. Make the Frosting: With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat the butter until fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the cream cheese, and vanilla and continue to beat for an additional 2 minutes, scraping the sides of the bowl as needed. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the powdered sugar gradually and mix until smooth and combined, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Increase the mixer speed to medium-high and beat until light and fluffy, 1 to 2 minutes.

6. Using a decorating bag (I use a Ziploc Bag, I personally believe it's stronger) and tip or an offset spatula, frost the tops of the cupcakes. The cupcakes can stay at room temperature for a few hours, but should be refrigerated for longer-term storage up to 4 days.

Enjoy!

I like to make sure I have all my ingredients before I start baking. You don't want to start baking and realize you need more butter! That would be terrible!

Mix all of your dry ingredients together. The flour, spices, salt...

Mix your butter for a few minutes

Then add your sugar and eggs

This is my huge bowl! Since I tripled the batter, I needed to use this huge bowl to combine my 12 cups of flour and my 12 eggs+ 6 sticks of butter. Plus my canned pumpkin! I went through three whole cans! That's a lot of batter I ended up with!

I use an ice cream scooper to divide my batter evenly

B. E. A. Utiful!

All done! Don't mind the cupcake liners, I didn't have any Thanksgiving Themed ones! Haha!

Butter and Powdered Sugar for the frosting

Adding a little more Powdered Sugar..

There we go! Nice and smooth

This is the ideal peak you want for frosting, something that isn't too runny, and not too firm. 

If you get frosting that is too runny, just add more powdered sugar!

Pretty Peak!

And my finished product!