New Chocolate Creations!

I have been trying to work with reimagining other kinds of desserts into cupcake form and came up with these new kinds. 

The first one is a chocolate chip cookie dough cupcake.  It's a chocolate cake with a cookie dough filling and a cookie dough frosting.  It's garnished here with a chunk of milk chocolate. 

The second one is modeled after a Hostess Snowball.  It's a chocolate cake with a whipped buttercream filling and then topped with marshmallow cream and pink sugary coconut. 

The third is a fairly basic cookies 'n cream cupcake.  It's a chocolate cake with a while chocolate sandwich cookie in the bottom of the cup.  It's topped with a vanilla & chocolate swirl frosting and crushed cookie pieces. 

And my personal favorite ( my parents and I each ate one to make sure they were okay) is a Take 5 cupcake.  It's a chocolate cake (yes, again) with a caramel-fudge filling and then topped with a peanut butter buttercream and then rolled in pretzel crumbs and garnished with chopped milk chocolate. 



Photo Dump

I have a ton of old cakes I've done for various projects on my computer that I'm going to try to post little by little. 



Summertime Flavors!

I decided to go with a 'picnic' theme, incorporating some flavors I've tried before with some new ones.  I'll break them down one by one. 

The first is a watermelon cupcake.  It's a watermelon cake filled with a watermelon coulis and topped with a watermelon buttercream frosting and black candy pearls. 

 While it looks like a 'slider', a mini burger, it is actually an orange cake, a moist cake filled with fresh orange zest.  There is a rich chocolate fudge filling and a raspberry-infused buttercream frosting, tinted here to give the appearance of ketchup and mustard.  The top is garnished with sesame seeds that have been cooked in simple syrup. 

The third flavor I made for the 'picnic' spread is a pink lemonade which I actually tried for the first time two summers ago.  It is a strong and tangy cake with a 'pink lemonade' flavor.  It is filled with pink lemonade lemon curd and topped with a pink lemonade buttercream and garnished with a drinking straw

This is another one that I've tried in the past and was very popular.  This is one of the more whimsical-looking cupcakes I've ever done as well.  It gives off the appearance of corn on the cob, complete with a square of butter and salt and pepper.  It's actually a moist lemon cake topped with a buttery, lemony frosting and then garnished with lemon jelly beans and a lemon Starburst candy, as well as both white and black sugar. 

The last of the flavors I tried is a Root Beer Float.  It's a cake with very heavy ginger flavors in it.  It is topped with a buttercream that has a strong vanilla flavor and a root beer syrup drizzled over the top and then garnished with a drinking straw. 

Another Wedding, A Couple New Flavors!

I did 200 cupcakes for the wedding the first weekend of July.  I ended up doing fifty each of four flavors.  The first one was what has quickly become my most popular cupcake, the carrot.  It's topped with cream cheese frosting and then sprinkled with cinnamon and garnished with a glazed walnut. 



The second one I made was a red velvet.  Fun fact: Red Velvet cake is really just chocolate cake with a red tint to it.  Anyway, I tried my hand at the 'trendy right now' flavor of red velvet and then topped it with cream cheese frosting and white chocolate curls, achieved by using a simple vegetable peeler. 

The bride had a 'antique tea room' theme for her wedding reception and had asked for two 'tea' flavors as cupcake flavors. 

The first of the 'tea' flavors was an Earl Grey cupcake.  I ground the tea leaves to a powder and then stirred it into a vanilla bean cupcake.  It gave the interior of the cupcake a 'speckled' appearance that was actually quite appealing.  The frosting was an Earl Grey infused buttercream, which naturally tints to a violet gray color.  The garnish on this one is candy pearls. 

And the second of the 'tea' flavors was green tea cupcake.  Once again, I ground the green tea leaves and also steeped some green tea in the milk for the batter.  It really does taste like green tea, which surprised me.  It was topped with green tea infused frosting and garnished with tinted white chocolate 'leaves'. 



Mini Cupcakes!

I made the mistake of not taking individual pictures of the mini cupcakes I made for a wedding shower in July.  I will try to zoom in on these individually as I explain them though. 

I made the lemon cupcake and filled it with homemade lemon curd and then topped it with meringue and then browned it with my blow torch to make it into a lemon meringue cupcake!

The second was a vanilla cupcake filled with a strawberry and blueberry coulis and then topped with cheesecake frosting and garnished with a single candied blueberry. 

This picture is a not good quality.  Sorry.  It's the same chocolate cake from the Spencer wedding and topped with chocolate fudge frosting and garnished with shaved milk chocolate. 

Another not very good picture and another remake from the wedding.  The carrot cake is topped with cream cheese frosting and then garnished with cinnamon and a glazed walnut again. 

The last one I tried was a caramel apple.  It's a green apple cake and then it was topped with thick caramel and chopped peanuts and had a miniature popsicle stick. 



Spencer Wedding - 5/26/12 Part 2

The Cupcakes

The first cupcake was a mocha cupcake.  It is a rich chocolate cake with a coffee essence.  It was topped with a thick chocolate fudge frosting and then chopped milk chocolate as well as a dark chocolate eighth note (the bride and groom met at work- as choir teachers!). 

The next cupcake was a carrot cake.  This is a seriously heavy cake, but it is so worth it.  It's got loads of fresh grated carrots as well as crushed pineappe and coconut.  It was topped with a maple cream cheese frosting and then dusted with cinnamon and garnished with a candied walnut. 

The last cupcake was a lemon.  It is very buttery and lemony, but still pretty light in consistency.  It was topped with fresh whipped cream infused with fresh lemon juice and candied lemon peel. 

Here is a picture of the finished cake table at the wedding. 





Spencer Wedding- 5/26/12 Part 1

The 'Bride's Cake'.  It is a chocolate stout cake with a fudge filling and frosting and then was wrapped in white fondant. 

The 'sample cupcakes' I made for the couple for a family dinner. 



The first step in the process was narrowing down flavor choices to only three.  Chocolate and lemon were decided on almost immediately.  But we still had one to go.  Informal surveys were conducted and in the end, the third flavor decided upon was carrot cake. 



And from another angle. 

 I secured the availability of the huge kitchen I work in every day.  My boss was going to let us invade and use her twenty-four count muffin pans and double ovens!  Awesome.  We packed up our ingredients and drove across town and got to work.  Five hours and five hundred and seventy-four cupcakes later, we had everything boxed up but not frosted. 

The next day was spent working on the actual wedding cakes.  A few weeks prior the bride, my cousin Jennifer, called and had asked for a seperate cake for her husband-to-be.  In all of the third flavor discussion, the groom had stated his desire to have a yellow cake with choclate frosting as a choice.  It was immediately dismissed, because yellow cake with choclate frosting is fine for a church basement after a funeral, but not very impressive. (*Note- I'm not trying to offend whoever served yellow cake with chocolate frosting at their wedding.  But, really?) Anyway, Jennifer had called me and asked for a seperate 'Groom's Cake' to be made for the groom, Jeff.  He loves cupcakes, he loves yellow cake and, being from Nebraska, he obviously loves the Cornhuskers.  So the giant Cornhuskers cupcake was added to the order. It was a simple yellow cake with the same chocolate fudge frosting as the bride's cake and the chocolate cupcakes.



The 'Groom's Cake' in the process of being made

And later on the display table at the reception. 

The 'cupcake liner' was white chocolate, which was my awesome mom's idea.  The giant cupcake pan is silicone so it was very easy to paint the interior of it.  After letting it harden, I simply peeled the silicone rubber away from the hard chocolate, leaving me with a large chocolate cup. I spread a thin layer of white buttercream over the base of the giant cupcake and then slid it into the liner.  It cracked cleanly in two places, which I was anticipating.  I was trying to put a cake into a chocolate shell that was the same exact size as the cake.  It was patched with red candy melts, making a striped pattern on the liner.  It was filled with fudge and then topped with chocolate fudge frosting. 

Then came the decoration of it.  I already knew I wanted to make a chocolate piece to sit on the cupcake and have it be very cleary Cornhuskers-related.  I started by melting a large amout of white chocolate in different colors.  The 'N' was the hardest part, as it needed to be straight lines and clean angles.  After that, I made the corn on the cob for it to sit on.  It was hand-piped on by the kernel.  Finally, it was all stuck together with yet more melted chocolate.  Altogether, I would bet the decoration weighed close to three pounds. 

More coming in part two.....