Sweet Springtime

Alright, go head, I'm holding out my wrist. You can slap me now. I know, I've been a baaaaad blogger. Over a month since my last post?! How could I?

Well, now that my wrist stings, I'm just going to fix this little problem that we have. Springtime is finally approaching and I've had my first tastes of that warmer air where I don't even need a jacket and I can drive around with the windows down and Ray LaMontagne up, thus I'm feeling better. Winter always does a number on me, but who doesn't fall into that category? Unless you live in the tropics. Jerks.

My feet aren't dragging at a molasses' pace anymore and the thought of extra hours of light in the day gets me all ready to try new things. In these colder, gloomier days I've been perusing various baking websites to gather up ideas for my spring overhaul. I have an up and coming project in the last weekend of March that I'm really excited about. I was asked to make a cake for a 3rd birthday party for an adorable little girl who wants Dora and Diego to grace her cake. You got it little lady. (Stay tuned for pictures and updates on that awesome cake!)

Spring is also the downfall of me. Why? Because of these:
Oh cadbury mini eggs. How you will be the death of me this spring. You always are. I am determined to find a way to incorporate these into a baking project for Easter. Just wait.

Speaking of incorporating yummyness into a baking project, take a look at what the folks over on CakeSpy recently posted. Yes my friends, a Girl Scout cookie cupcake. Say it with me, HEAVEN.

A coconut cupcake with Samoa crumbles on top. If I had a box of Samoas in my house I would be making these, stat. But alas, the universe is against me and my weightloss strategy wins again so that cannot happen. Instead, I will just oogle over their deliciousness.

And lastly, other baking cuteness I've come across in recent days.

I'm always a huge fan of Hello Naomi and her adorable cupcakes.


Then of course there's my friend, Bakerella, with these adorable as always St. Patty's day cake balls.
And who says you always have to eat the cuteness? Why not wear it? I love this Natalie Dee Cupcake Shirt.

Until next time,

Sweet Monday

Though most of us "normal" people in the world have little appreciation for Mondays, I figure it would be a good idea to have a regular post on Mondays just to make people smile. Whether it's a cute baking idea I've found, maybe a little cartoon, or a funny story, I hope it makes everyone's Monday just a little bit sweeter.

I was browsing over at CakeSpy (btw: I want every single piece of merchandise with those cute watercolor cupcakes!) and found this post about 50 Ways To Kill a Twinkie. I think my favorite sequence is where they make croutons out of the fried twinkie and then proceed to serve them on a salad. When you're expecting croutons, friend twinkies must taste so gross! I wonder how a fried twinkie tastes anyway...(note to self:pretty much anything fried tastes good!)

And now for something completely different:

Hello Naomi was my inspiration for the Robot Cupcakes and I wanted to share another adorable set of cupcakes that she made. Seeing what she comes up with really gets my brain cranking on great ideas for cupcakes. Take a look:



I hope you have a Sweet Monday!

Now I talk like a robot

I wanted to do something special for Josh's birthday and also my friend Rachael's birthday. We are having a little get together tomorrow night and I wanted to have some baked goodies for the festivities. I wanted, of course, to do something creative for them. I found some ideas online and finally found one that seemed like it would be a lot of fun, definitely a challenge, but definitely fun.

After some exploring I came across this design by Hello Naomi. She has a lot of great ideas, you should check her out. I completely fell in love with this robot design.



They are so adorable, but the process was very tedious. It took me all afternoon. I made everything from scratch except the cupcakes themselves. I'm not superwoman.

I bought Josh's favorite flavor cake, Dark Chocolate and whipped me up some cupcakes.

I decided to try my hand at making homemade fondant. I've used Wilton before, and to be honest I found it to taste pretty blah, and then I used Satin Ice, which tasted much better but it's quite expensive. I would have paid about 25 bucks for Satin Ice and I paid about 7 bucks for these ingredients. It was a really easy recipe but quite messy.

First I took 16 oz. of Marshmallows and melted them in a microwave safe bowl with 4 Tbsp. of water for 2 minutes and then stirred until all the lumps were out. Then I gradually added 3 lbs of powdered sugar and kneaded it to the Marshmallow mix until it became a doughy consistency.

As I worked with the fondant I had to continue to add the powdered sugar because it was still quite sticky. I then rolled it out on a mat covered in powdered sugar and used a round cookie cutter to create the circles of fondant to top the cupcakes with.

To keep the fondant on the cupcakes I simply frosted the cupcakes with some buttercream frosting as a glue so the fondant would stick.
I needed quite a few different colors of fondant for the robots so I separated out some fondant and colored the fondant with food coloring gels. The gels caused the fondant to get sticky again so I had to keep my hands powdered with the sugar in order to keep it from getting out of control. I then put it into the baggies and refrigerated it for about 10 minutes so it would harden a bit.
Next, I took a paring knife and began to cut out the individual shapes for all of the robots. This was quite time consuming seeing that the parts are very particular but it was fun giving each of the robots character. To get the colored fondant to stick to each other I brushed a little bit of water on it so it would be adhesive.
Many thanks to my parents for letting me use their kitchen. Our little apartment kitchen would have made me insane trying to do this project today. I was quite a happy camper having that extra counter space to spread out.
After about 5 hours of hard work, I finally had the finished project. I think they turned out fantastic and will be a huge hit at the party!
The fun thing about these robots being on cupcakes is the fact that you can mix and match their body parts to create new robots. This was definitely a fun project and I'm really pleased with the outcome.

"Meep meep bo beep meep."
Translated, that means Happy Birthday Josh and Rachael.