Cake #31: Flower Patch Surprise

Last week, my boss celebrated her birthday; unfortunately, with so many coworkers in-and-out of the office, we didn't get a chance to celebrate until today. For some odd reason, we decided that the theme of her party should be opossums (it was based on a joke shared at our last staff meeting.) My coworkers had hoped that I would make a "opossum" cake - but I was unsure how exactly one goes about making a "opossum" cake.

My original plan was to create a garden of cupcakes, and then add a small fondant opossum to one of the cupcakes. After working hours to create the flowers, I didn't really feel that I had time to experiment with fondant modeling; therefore, I scraped the opossum idea and decided to merely make a hilly, flowered meadow.

Cake #30: A Howling Good Cupcake

Although I'm leaving for vacation in a couple days, I still somehow got roped into baking the birthday cake for one of my co-workers. Since I was a little pressed for time, I decided to bake cupcakes so that the bake time would be reduced. Fortunately, the co-worker celebrating her birthday is a big supporter of wolves (she and her husband apparently do a lot of volunteer work trying to preserve the wolf's habitat.)

Anyway, I had been wanting to make these "wolf" cupcakes from Hello, Cupcake for awhile, so I thought this would be the perfect occasion. To make the wolf, I cut a large marshmallow to make the snout and ears. Then, I covered the entire cupcake in chocolate frosting using the leave tip. For a finishing touch, I adding a few M&Ms for the nose and eyes.

Cake #29: "Hot Chocolate" Cake

A couple months ago, a former colleague emailed me a recipe for a cake-in-a-mug, which gave me the idea for these delightful holiday gifts for my current co-workers. The original recipe created an individual serving that could be baked in the microwave. Unfortunately, the resulting cake was far from desirable; the microwaved-cake was extremely dense and ill tasting...in fact, it reminded me of the cake/brownie commonly found in frozen TV dinners.

However, since I liked the mug-cake idea so much, I decided to use the idea - only instead of baking the cake directly in the mugs, I used a traditional cake mix in Wilton's extra-large cupcakes. I, then, merely topped the cupcakes with a generous amount of buttercream; finally, I added a peppermint stick for decoration (I had originally planned to also top these with chocolate sprinkles, but I accidentally forget to add them before I had the mugs wrapped...)

Cake #27: The Great Pumpkin Patch

Since there are a couple Halloween cakes I plan on trying this year, I thought I'd get an early start by making these simple pumpkin cupcakes (from Hello, Cupcake.) These easy cupcakes were made by mounding a large lump of buttercream frosting atop a French Vanilla cupcake. After smoothing the icing, I merely dipped them in orange sugar crystals.

To finish the cupcakes, I added a short section of watermelon twizzler (from a Rainbow favored pack) for the stem. Finally, I used a slightly darker orange to create the line segments in the pumpkins flesh; I used a tip 3 to complete these lines, but I really wish I'd have used a larger tip.

Cake #26: Give a Hoot

This past weekend, one of my co-workers celebrated her birthday, so I decided to make some Owl cupcakes, from Hello, Cupcake, in her honor. Later this month when I have my "Kids in the Kitchen" program, I plan on having the children make these owl cupcakes. Since I was unsure of exactly how these would turn-out, I decided to kill two birds with one stone by using my practice cupcakes for her birthday celebration.

To make these cupcakes, I began by coating each cupcake with a base-layer of store-bought chocolate frosting. I then added two frosted-halves of Oreo cookies with a small Junior mint for the pupil. For the beak, I simply used a yellow M&M (the book called for a banana Runt, but for some reason I couldn't locate any Runts at my local stores!) Finally, I finished the face by adding some chocolate-frosting "feathers" with my leaf-tip #352.

Cake #12: What's bugging you?

This summer, my library's children's reading program is "Catch the Reading Bug" so I decided to make this batch of special bug cupcakes for our staff meeting tomorrow.

I found this design in the book, Hello, Cupcake. To make the bugs, I used melted chocolate to trace the legs and antennae. Then, I added various sized M&Ms to make the bodies. It was somewhat difficult to pipe the chocolate into such thin lines...melted chocolate doesn't seem to have near the consistency of icing. I also learned that I had to allow the chocolate to solidify before I could actually add the M&Ms; when I added the M&Ms to the soft chocolate, it completely flattened the chocolate and ruined the design.

Eventually, I mastered the technique and had enough bugs for the cupcakes on hand. Hopefully my coworkers appreciate my hard work!

Cake #11: Everything's Sunny...too sunny

This weekend, I purchased the book Hello, Cupcake, one of the most original cake/cupcake books I've seen in recent times! It has so many cute ideas, and I plan on trying several of them.

These sunflowers cupcakes were one of the reasons I decided to actually buy this book. With simple cupcakes frosted in green buttercream frosting, I simply had to top with an Oreo and then use the leaf tip to make the yellow petals. Unfortunately, with the onset of summer weather (it was 106 the day I decorated these) my icing didn't stand up too well...I might have to make my buttercream a little thicker than normal these next couple months.